The Trump administration’s directive to federal immigration agents on the detention and deportation of parents of minor children is clear: US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents must accommodate a parent’s “efforts to make alternative care arrangements for their minor child(ren) prior to detention.” But a report released Wednesday by the Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC) and Physicians…
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This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Mar. 19, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
The Trump administration’s directive to federal immigration agents on the detention and deportation of parents of minor children is clear: US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents must accommodate a parent’s “efforts to make alternative care arrangements for their minor child(ren) prior to detention.”
But a report released Wednesday by the Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC) and Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) reveals that many parents, including dozens whom the groups interviewed at deportee reception centers in Honduras, have been forced to quickly leave their children in the “informal care” of friends, relatives, or even babysitters—many of whom are also vulnerable to deportation under the Trump administration—leaving them in precarious situations while traumatizing both parents and children.
According to the recently deported parents the group’s researchers interviewed—many of whom reported symptoms associated with psychological trauma, such as an inability to eat or sleep, physical pain, and “acute emotional distress” with “uncontrollable crying and visible panic”—ICE agents frequently did not follow the agency’s own guidelines to ask anyone they arrest whether they have children and to give parents an opportunity to take their children with them.
“They didn’t ask me anything,” said one 22-year-old mother of a two-year-old. “They didn’t talk to me, only to yell at me, to humiliate. They never said: ‘You have a daughter, you can bring her,’ because I would have brought [my daughter], she is very attached to me.”
Some parents told the researchers they had been ignored when they told arresting officers that they had children. One mother had three of her children with her when she was detained outside a hospital
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