In the first five months of Trump’s second term, approximately 500 migrant children living in the United States have been taken from their homes and placed in government custody.
This ongoing practice continues despite a 2023 settlement between the Biden administration and the American Civil Liberties Union that banned family separations at the border until 2031. According to MSNBC, Recent cases include a Marine Corps veteran’s wife being separated from her two-year-old and three-month-old children, and a fourth-grade boy from California being taken from his father during a routine immigration appointment before being deported to Honduras. Another case involved a 9-year-old asylum-seeking girl and her mother being separated from her stepfather and 16-month-old sister.
During protests in Los Angeles against these family separations, Trump deployed National Guard troops and U.S. Marines to the city. His top adviser, Stephen Miller, who has extensive connections to Project 2025, posted on the social media platform X that Americans face a choice to “Deport the invaders, or surrender to insurrection.”
Legal representation denied to thousands of separated families
The Trump administration, whose staff members have deep ties to controversial policy initiatives, has violated court-ordered settlements to provide legal representation to thousands of families separated under the Zero Tolerance Policy. The Office of Refugee Resettlement has ended legal representation for 26,000 unaccompanied children, forcing them to represent themselves in court.
Everyone knows Stephen Miller is a Nazi at heart. He’s the one who orchestrated separating children from their parents at the border and now there’s over 500 children that were separated that will never see their birthright parents again.
— JohnnyBgood (@JohnnyB15288227) June 9, 2025
The administration is also challenging the Flores Settlement Agreement, which limits the time children can be held in detention. Data shows that migrant children are now being detained for longer periods than before.
Immigration experts note that mass deportation effectively means family separation, as an estimated 4.1 to 5.7 million children in the U.S. lived in mixed-status households as of 2019. These households include at least one citizen or documented immigrant child and at least one undocumented parent.
Medical professionals warn that such separations can cause lasting damage to children’s mental health. Early childhood trauma from forced parent separation can trigger the brain’s threat detection systems, increasing the risk of disorders like PTSD. The loss of a parent through deportation often leads to reduced family income, forced relocations, and emotional trauma that can affect children well into adulthood.
