A System Designed to Keep Immigrant Parents From Their Children

In Trump’s America, children languish in custody, separated from their parents because of their immigration status.

As the first ombudsperson for unaccompanied children at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, a career position I held for four months before I was removed by the Trump administration, I had the opportunity to advocate for the best interests of immigrant kids in government custody.

Since my departure, I have been tracking the demolition of the unaccompanied children’s program, watching it turn from a child-centered framework helping vulnerable children, to one in which children are used as pawns in President Donald Trump’s endless appetite for deportation.

This administration is keeping children from their parents, with potentially disastrous consequences. Under the legal framework governing the care and custody of unaccompanied children, they should be placed in the least restrictive setting possible and discharged to a parent or other sponsor as quickly as possible. Numerous studies have documented the impact of even a short period of detention on children as well as the effects of separation from their loved ones. Americans saw this firsthand during the family separation scandal of the first Trump administration.

It is now the exception, not the norm, for a child to be released to their loving family members who eagerly await them.

Neha Desai, National Center for Youth Law

But the current administration does not seem to care about the ramifications for children. In February 2025, children remained in custody for 49 days on average before being released to a parent or other sponsor. In April, after new policies had been in effect for a month, the average time in custody rose to 217 days. More tellingly, although the average number of children in custody has not changed significantly since February, the number returned to parents and other individuals has plummeted from 1,858 children released in February to just 45 in April.

The parents and children who are plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit filed in May, Angelica S. v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, describe the trauma of being kept apart from each other while parents scramble to meet new requirements that may render them permanently ineligible to sponsor their own children. These children and teenagers recount their sadness, boredom, confusion and anxiety as they languish in custody. The lawsuit alleges that the government has crafted proof of identity, income and relationship requirements that are virtually impossible for many people without immigration status to meet. In effect, parents are being denied access to their children solely because of their immigration status.

Neha Desai, managing director of children’s human rights and dignity at the National Center for Youth Law, part of the team that brought the lawsuit, says, “It is now the exception, not the norm, for a child to be released to their loving family members who eagerly await them. Instead, most unaccompanied children will be trapped in custody until they age out at 18, unless they are deported sooner or request ‘voluntary’ departure due to their extreme detention fatigue.”

The administration also abruptly canceled a multimillion-dollar legal services contract with the Acacia Center for Justice, jeopardizing the cases of approximately 26,000 children represented by attorneys from more than 100 legal organizations around the country. Although the contract was temporarily reinstated under court order, the damage has been done.

According to Ailin Buigues, Acacia’s managing director of legal representation, these organizations slashed staff and are now scrambling to restore their services — and relationships with children — that were broken by the government’s actions. “Providers are feeling the whiplash of stopping and starting,” she says. “It feels like an intentional effort to destabilize the programs and deny due process for kids.”

These are only two examples of the ways the administration is callously disregarding children’s well-being. And it could get worse. Recent legislative proposals would use budget measures to strip away most protections for children, fining them for entering the U.S., levying exorbitant fees for immigration applications, and charging parents thousands of dollars before their children could be released to them.

And there is virtually no one within the government to push back. The ombuds office remains, but its staff has been drastically reduced and its activities have been restricted by HHS leadership. There is no guarantee it will survive a planned HHS reorganization.

The Department of Homeland Security has gutted the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, which advocated for the protection of individual rights across all DHS programs but had a specialized immigration unit that frequently investigated abuses in family detention centers, according to Megan Mack, a former head of CRCL.

DHS claims that oversight offices create bureaucratic obstacles for law enforcement and that agencies like the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman serve as internal adversaries who “slow down operations.”

According to Michelle Brané, a former OIDO ombudsperson, hers was the only agency with a routine physical presence and direct oversight of Customs and Border Protection facilities, which meant that they often intervened to prevent unnecessary family separation and facilitate reunifications. As far as she knows, the OIDO no longer has sufficient staffing or resources to resume oversight of those facilities.

It feels like an intentional effort to destabilize the programs and deny due process for kids.

Ailin Buigues, Acacia Center for Justice

The government claims its approach is hyperfocused on protecting children from traffickers and abuse, relying on a script that has been used for years by anti-immigration pundits to argue that prior administrations have facilitated trafficking through lax policies. People on the ground shake their heads in disbelief, noting that everything the administration is doing has the potential to make children more vulnerable by separating them from the people and services that keep them safe.

Jonathan Beier, the associate director of research and evaluation for the unaccompanied children’s program at Acacia, notes, “If you care about trafficking, about what will protect children, you have to ask: Are children feeling supported? A loving family, community connections, being enrolled in school, having an attorney — that’s what protects children. But intimidating the community, preventing children from being reunified [with a parent], or taking a child away because of the parent’s immigration status? There’s no way that this is keeping kids safe.”

The Trump administration treats children’s detention as part of its tool kit for mass deportation. Children should never be treated as instruments, and parents should not be kept from their kids because of their legal status.

This article appears in the Summer 2025 issue of Ms. Join the Ms. community today and you’ll get issues delivered straight to your mailbox—or order a single copy of the Summer issue as a standalone for just $5.