Since taking office in January 2025, the second Trump administration has rapidly expanded immigration enforcement, including detention and deportation of individuals living in the US interior. At the same time, the administration has weakened or disregarded numerous existing laws, policies, and safeguards designed to ensure due process, protect family unity, and preserve parental rights, with profound consequences for immigrant families and receiving countries. Detentions and deportations are likely to accelerate significantly, as the administration continues to implement the $170 billion dollars Congress provided for immigration enforcement under H.R.1, the “One Big Beautiful Bill.”
Unlike in prior years, when the deported population largely consisted of individuals and families that had recently crossed the US-Mexico border, the second Trump administration has primarily targeted longtime US residents, many of whom have lived in the country for years or even decades. The pace and scale of immigration enforcement has increased exponentially; immigration arrests more than quadrupled in 2025, leading to the highest rates of immigration detention in US history. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) own data confirms that 92 percent of the detention increase has been driven by people without any criminal record. Many of those detained and deported are parents with US citizen children.
Significant numbers of detained and deported parents are experiencing violations of US policy designed to protect family unity and parental rights. However, there is little publicly available information to assess the scope and scale of those violations, which include deporting parents without providing them an opportunity to bring their children with them. When parents are deported quickly and without an opportunity to arrange for the care of their children, their children often remain in the US without stable caregivers or support. Many remain in the informal care of friends, family members, or even babysitters, often without formal custody arrangements or legal protections. Their caregivers may themselves be vulnerable to immigration enforcement, leaving these children in even more precarious circumstances.
To begin addressing this information gap, the Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC) and Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) traveled to San Pedro Sula, Honduras.
Researchers co-located with service providers in the reception centers that receive deportees and conducted dozens of interviews with reception center staff, physicians and psychologists, government officials, and deportees themselves.
Researchers uncovered significant violations of the administration’s directive on detained parents, which requires that parents facing deportation be given an opportunity to decide what will happen to their children. From the cases researchers observed, these violations are leading to many family separations that, absent meaningful assistance with reunification, may become long-term or even permanent.
