Separating children from parents: A violation of human rights in the U.S.

During Donald Trump’s first term as president of the United States, his immigration policy separated more than 5,000 children from their families at the U.S.–Mexico border. Images of infants and toddlers being taken from their mothers’ arms sparked global condemnation.

Seven years later, families are still being separated, but in a completely different way. As illegal border crossings have dropped to their lowest level in seven decades, pressure for mass deportations is tearing apart families with mixed legal status inside the United States.

By “mixed legal status,” it is meant that some members of a family have legal documentation, while other members of the same family do not have lawful residency.

Federal authorities and local law enforcement partners of the U.S. government are detaining tens of thousands of asylum seekers and migrants. Detainees are repeatedly transferred, then either deported or held for weeks or months in poor conditions until they agree to request voluntary return to their home countries.

In November, the U.S. federal government held an average of more than 66,000 people in detention, the highest figure ever recorded.

During Trump’s first presidency, families were forcibly separated at the border, and officials struggled to locate children within a vast shelter system because government computer systems were not interconnected.

Now, parents inside the United States are arrested by immigration authorities and separated from their families during prolonged detention. They are also forced to choose whether their children should remain in the U.S.—only to face deportation upon reaching adulthood—or be deported together with them.

The U.S. government and its anti-immigration supporters have portrayed this situation—which international organizations describe as a violation of human rights—as an unprecedented success. Tom Homan, Trump’s senior border adviser, said in April: “We are moving forward at full speed.”

According to official statistics from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), by December 2025, more than 605,000 migrants had been formally deported from the United States, and about 1.9 million people had left the country voluntarily—meaning that more than 2.5 million people in total have left the U.S.

Critics and human rights organizations such as the American Immigration Council and Human Rights Watch consider U.S. immigration policies to constitute widespread violations of human rights.

Reports point to inhumane conditions in detention centers, the separation of families, the detention of individuals with no criminal record, and even administrative errors that have led to the deportation of people with legal status.

U.S. federal courts have issued more than 220 rulings against the systematic detention of migrants, and nationwide protests have taken place in states such as California, Texas, and New York. Nevertheless, Trump has ignored these developments and continues to insist on the implementation of his anti–human rights policies.