An Associated Press investigation has found that the U.S. government has re-separated dozens of children from their families, despite a landmark legal settlement meant to keep them together, eight years after President Donald Trump’s forcible border separations triggered global outrage and came to an official halt.
The AP reported June 4 that some parents have been locked in immigration detention facilities for months, and others deported to their home countries after being taken from their families once again. In some cases, immigration officials conducting interior sweeps deported people despite discovering they were legally off limits for removal, according to emails obtained by the AP.
The central case detailed by the AP involved Ederson Galicia Alva, who was 3 years old in 2018 when he was taken from his mother’s arms at the U.S.-Mexico border under the first Trump administration’s family separation policy. He was kept apart from her in a government facility for months until lawyers intervened and reunified them.
Then, in June 2025, Ederson and his mother were separated a second time and ultimately sent back to Guatemala, despite legal protections meant to keep families like theirs together, according to the AP.
After nearly a year in the indigenous highlands of Guatemala, the family was finally allowed to return to Florida last week, following a federal judge’s order that the government had acted illegally.