ICE Is Ignoring Rules Put in Place to Avoid Family Separations, Researchers Say

The Women's Refugee Commission and Physicians for Human Rights found that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is violating its own rules designed to prevent family separations during deportations. In interviews with 29 newly deported parents in Honduras last November, researchers discovered that the vast majority said ICE officers never asked whether they had children at home, contrary to agency guidelines requiring such screening. The Trump administration weakened the rules in July, removing the requirement that ICE facilitate reunification if operationally feasible, resulting in cases like four recently postpartum women separated from their newborns. Among those interviewed, some parents attempted to volunteer information about their children to officers but were deported anyway—including a mother of four whose kids were left unsupervised until a grandmother could travel across state lines to care for them. The report documents multiple cases of parents arriving in Honduras "in acute emotional distress" after days or weeks without contact with their children or caregivers.