Children Torn Again — Court Deal Ignored?

An Associated Press investigation has found that dozens of children already separated from their parents under the first Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy have been separated again — this time in apparent conflict with a landmark legal settlement designed to prevent exactly that.

Story Snapshot

An AP investigation found the government re-separated dozens of children from families despite a legal settlement meant to keep them together.
The Department of Homeland Security responded that it “complies with all court orders,” disputing that the re-separations were unlawful.
The first Trump administration’s zero tolerance policy formally separated more than 5,500 children from parents at the border, with roughly 1,090 separations occurring even after a court ordered the practice to stop.
Advocacy groups and legal experts say the current administration is continuing to target previously separated families by removing legal support programs and re-detaining parents.

Zero Tolerance: How the Original Separations Unfolded

The first Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy mandated prosecution of all undocumented border crossers, which operationally required separating children from their parents when adults were taken into criminal custody. ^[3] More than 5,500 children were separated under the policy, and the government later revised that count upward by an additional 1,556 cases. ^[1] Approximately 1,090 of those separations occurred after a federal court ordered the practice to end in June 2018. ^[1]

The scale and chaotic record-keeping of the original separations created lasting complications. Incomplete custody documentation made reunification difficult, and some parents were deported to their home countries before their children could be returned to them. ^[5] That administrative disorder laid the groundwork for the ongoing legal battles and settlement agreements that followed — agreements now at the center of the re-separation controversy.

Re-Separations Under the Settlement Agreement

A landmark legal settlement was reached after the first round of separations, establishing specific protections intended to prevent families from being split apart again. According to the AP investigation, the current administration has re-separated dozens of children from their families despite that agreement. ^[2] Some parents were placed back into immigration detention while others were removed from the country entirely, effectively separating them from children still inside the United States.

The Department of Homeland Security pushed back on characterizations of wrongdoing, stating publicly that it “complies with all court orders.” ^[2] That defense echoes language from Trump’s June 2018 executive order, which directed authorities to keep families together only “to the extent permitted by law and subject to the availability of appropriations” — language that preserves legal discretion in certain enforcement scenarios rather than imposing an absolute prohibition on separation. ^[1]

Advocacy Groups Sound the Alarm on New Targeting

Legal advocacy organizations argue the current administration has gone beyond passive re-separation and is actively targeting families that were previously separated under zero tolerance. The Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights reported in April 2025 that parents and children formerly separated under the original policy are being targeted again by Trump administration enforcement actions. ^[7] The group characterized this as a continuation of the same harmful pattern under a different operational framework.

Additional legal experts responded to the administration’s termination of support programs for separated families, with some calling the program cuts “family separation by another name.” ^[8] From a conservative standpoint, the government’s position — that it is operating within court orders and existing law — deserves fair consideration. However, the documented pattern of separations continuing even after court orders and settlement agreements raises legitimate questions about whether administrative processes are functioning as intended and whether affected children are receiving proper legal protections under U.S. law. The facts on the ground, as reported by the AP, suggest the system still has serious unresolved problems regardless of which administration is in office. ^[2]^[5]