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ICE Deporting Parents Without Allowing Them to Bring or Find Care for Children: Report
Federal immigration agents are required to allow parents to "make alternative care arrangements" for their children before they're detained.
Mar 19, 2026
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 where she had gone to a medical appointment, and her three other children were at home. She was "dismissed" when she told the officers about her other children, and the family was separated.
Parents told researchers about being forced to abruptly leave their children in precarious situations—or even entirely alone.
A father who was arrested after leaving his three-year-old daughter with a babysitter said he begged the federal agents to allow him to go inside and tell the caretaker what was happening; his wife had already been detained.
"They didn’t ask me anything. 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."
“They just kept yelling at me to get on the ground,” he told the researchers. “I tried to get away but they threw me to the ground and wouldn’t let me say anything. They beat me really badly.”
The babysitter stayed with the child for 11 days when the father didn't return home.
A mother whose husband had previously been deported was forced to leave her four children entirely alone until their grandmother could get to them from out-of-state.
Michele Heisler, a physician with PHR, told The Guardian Thursday that ICE's refusal to follow its own directives on detaining parents "is going to create a really high burden of mental health distress."
“For a toddler, they are left with a sense of abandonment that’s kind of imprinted,” she said. “It’s hard for all of us to understand why there is this gratuitous level of cruelty happening."
DHS has repeatedly claimed that it does not separate children from their parents despite numerous reports showing otherwise.
The Trump administration weakened its protections for families in its "Detained Parents Directive" last year, eliminating a guideline that stipulated ICE agents must take into consideration whether or not an individual is a parent or legal guardian when deciding whether to detain or deport them at all.
But agents are still required to allow parents to bring their children if they are deported, and to decide what happens to their children when they are detained or removed from the country.
WRC and PHR called on Congress to codify parental interest protections, including a right to reunification with their children before and after deportation. They also urged Congress to require ICE to coordinate with state child welfare agencies to facilitate reunification and to require the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to appoint a national coordinator on child welfare.
DHS appropriations bills must prevent "ICE, CBP, and other immigration agencies from using any appropriated funds for enforcement that violates laws or DHS policy pertaining to family separation, specifically the Detained Parents Directive."
Democrats in the Senate have vowed to block funding for ICE and other DHS agencies until the Trump administration agrees to immigration enforcement reforms, with the demands mainly relating to federal agents wearing masks during enforcement operations and entering private property without judicial warrants.
The report released Wednesday warned that the "scope and scale of these types of family separations is likely to worsen" as the impacts of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act—the law that provided $170 billion for immigration enforcement—are "fully realized" in the coming months.
WRC and PHR said they "aim to prevent further family separations and reunify separated families by documenting systemic violations of existing family unity policies, identifying reforms to protect children and parents, and working with receiving countries like Honduras to establish systems to ensure prompt reunification of separated families."
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'Catastrophic,' Says UNICEF: 1,100+ Children Killed or Wounded in Mideast Since US-Israel Launched Iran War
The agency demanded that all parties protect civilians and reiterated the secretary-general's call "to end the fighting and engage in diplomatic negotiations."
Mar 12, 2026
Since the United States and Israel launched an unprovoked war on Iran at the end of February, more than 1,100 youth have been killed or injured in related violence across the Middle East, the United Nations Children's Fund said Wednesday, calling for a swift diplomatic resolution.
"The situation is becoming catastrophic for millions of children across the region," UNICEF said in a statement, noting that at least 200 children are reportedly dead in Iran, 91 in Lebanon, four in Israel, and one in Kuwait. "These numbers will likely climb as the violence intensifies and spreads."
Most of the kids killed in Iran died in what mounting evidence suggests was a US attack on the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls' school in Minab on February 28. That attack killed an estimated 175 people, mostly students ages 7-12, part of an overall death toll that the Iranian government has said exceeds 1,300.
Responding to the school bombing, Gordon Brown, a former UK prime minister who's now the UN special envoy for global education, argued in a Guardian opinion piece Thursday that "the world will now need stronger mechanisms to ensure accountability," such as a body complementing the International Criminal Court but specifically for children, "focusing its attention on the bombing of schools, abductions of pupils, and militias that enslave boys and girls."
With the widening conflict in the Middle East, UNICEF noted Wednesday, "widespread disruption to education has left millions of children out of school across the region, while hundreds of thousands of children have been displaced by unrelenting bombardment."
In Lebanon, where Israeli attacks are allegedly targeting the Lebanese political and paramilitary group Hezbollah despite a November 2024 ceasefire deal, nearly 800,000 people, including around 200,000 children, have been forced from their homes, according to Mercy Corps. The Lebanese government has said at least 570 people have been killed and 1,444 injured.
"Civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, schools, and water and sanitation systems—upon which children depend to survive—have been attacked, damaged, or destroyed by parties to the conflict," UNICEF said. "Nothing justifies the killing and maiming of children, or the destruction and disruption of essential services that children depend on."
"Grave violations against children in armed conflict can constitute violations of international law, including international humanitarian law, and international human rights law," the UN agency continued.
Across Iran, several United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage sites have also been damaged by the US-Israeli war, which experts worldwide argue violates both the US Constitution and UN Charter.
The UN Security Council, which is currently led by President Donald Trump's administration, on Wednesday adopted a resolution condemning Iran's retaliatory attacks on Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Jordan—nations that host US military bases—without even mentioning the US-Israeli bombing campaign.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres last Friday demanded a return to negotiations. Trump, who abandoned a previous Iranian nuclear deal during his first term, ditched recent talks with Iran in favor of bombing the country with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who has used war on Iran to again close crossings into the Gaza Strip, or as critics have put it, reinstate a "starvation policy" in the Palestinian territory devastated by Israel's 29-month genocidal assault.
In addition to reiterating "the secretary-general's call on parties to the conflict to end the fighting and engage in diplomatic negotiations," UNICEF on Wednesday urged everyone involved "to take all necessary precautions in the choice of means and methods of warfare to minimize harm to civilians, including by avoiding the use of explosive weapons that disproportionally affect children."
"The region's children—all 200 million of them—are counting on the world to act quickly," the agency concluded.
A Wednesday letter signed by every member of the US Senate Democratic Caucus but Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.)—who previously helped Republicans block a war powers resolution intended to halt Trump's assault on Iran—called for a probe of the Minab school attack and sounded the alarm about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's rhetoric that "only serves to endanger civilians."
Specifically, Hegseth has said that the US assault on Iran, which they're calling Operation Epic Fury, would have "no stupid rules of engagement," and there will be "death and destruction from the sky all day long."
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'10 Classrooms Full of Children': US-Israeli War Kills Hundreds of Iranian, Lebanese Kids
"Classrooms of children in Iran. Hundreds of people in Lebanon. The ongoing genocide in Gaza," said Jeremy Corbyn. "The message from our political and media class is clear: Their lives are less valuable than others."
Mar 09, 2026
US and Israeli airstrikes have killed nearly 300 Iranian and Lebanese children over the past nine days as the attackers target apartment towers, single-family homes, schools, medical facilities, and other civilian infrastructure.
Iran's Health Ministry said Sunday that 198 women and 190 minors have been killed by US and Israeli attacks since February 28, including six children under the age of 5. The youngest reported victim is an 8-month-old girl. Children account for more than 30% of those killed, according to the ministry, which also said that 1,044 women and 638 children have been injured.
Overall, Iran said that more than 1,300 people have been killed by the airstrikes, which are reportedly targeting 30 of the country's 31 provinces.
The Lebanese Health Ministry announced Sunday that 394 people, including 42 women and 83 children, have been killed by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) attacks after Iran-backed Hezbollah joined the war.
The US-based charity Save the Children noted Monday that the number of slain Iranian and Lebanese minors is the equivalent of "10 classrooms full of children."
“It is devastating that airstrikes in Lebanon have reportedly caused the deaths of 83 children... among nearly 300 children killed in the region," said Save the Children Lebanon director Nora Ingdal. "These are not just numbers—these are young lives cut short and children whose futures have been forever scarred by war."
Israel claims it has killed around 200 Hezbollah fighters. However, the IDF's routine attacks on apartment towers and other residential buildings have drawn widespread condemnation.
On Sunday, an IDF strike massacred 18 people sheltering in an apartment building in Sir El-Gharbiyeh in Nabatieh district. The building was housing some of the nearly 700,000 Lebanese forcibly displaced by Israeli attacks, including around 200,000 children. Local officials said women and children were among the victims.
Israeli airstrikes hit a residential block in Sir Al-Gharbiya, a village in southern Lebanon, early this morning, killing at least 20 civilians, among them women and children.
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— Josep Goded (Backup Account But Still Active) (@josepgoded2.bsky.social) March 8, 2026 at 12:25 AM
Another IDF aerial massacre in the southern Lebanese town of Tafahata killed eight people, including five members of the Ezzedine family, whose home was bombed.
"This time is much worse than the previous war,” Nabatieh Civil Defense chief Hussein Faqih told the National, referring to Israel's 2023-25 attacks on Lebanon that killed more than 4,000 people, including nearly 800 women and over 300 children, in retaliation for Hezbollah's rocket strikes in solidarity with Palestine during the Gaza genocide.
Israeli attacks on Iran during last year's 12-Day War also killed more than 1,000 Iranians, including 436 civilians.
In the worst reported bombing of the current war—and possibly the deadliest US massacre since over 400 Iraqis were wiped out in a "precision strike" on a Baghdad bomb shelter during the 1991 Gulf War—around 175 Iranians, most of them young children, were killed in what first responders and victims' relatives said was a so-called double-tap strike on an elementary school in Minab in southern Iran.
US military investigators reportedly believe the strike was carried out by US forces, but President Donald Trump has blamed Iran.
On Monday, a group of Democratic US senators lead by Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire said they were "horrified" by the school strike.
"The killing of school children is appalling and unacceptable under any circumstance," the senators said in a statement. "This incident is particularly concerning in light of [Defense Secretary Pete] Hegseth’s openly cavalier approach to the use of force, including his statement that US strikes in Iran wouldn’t be bound by ‘stupid rules of engagement,’ in his words."
Multiple members of the UK Parliament have condemned the killing of Iranian and Lebanese children. Leftist Independent Jeremy Corbyn, a former Labour leader, said Monday on Bluesky: "Classrooms of children in Iran. Hundreds of people in Lebanon. The ongoing genocide in Gaza. The message from our political and media class is clear: Their lives are less valuable than others."
"Every human being matters, and every human being deserves a life of peace," Corbyn added.
Zahra Sultana, who quit Labour and started the socialist Your Party with Corbyn last year, mocked US and Israeli pretensions, saying in a BBC interview on Sunday—International Women's Day—that the girls in the Minab school were slaughtered "apparently to liberate women."
The US and Israel are committing war crimes in Iran and Lebanon.Keir Starmer must stop acting as Donald Trump’s poodle and end UK arms sales, military cooperation and the use of British bases.
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— Zarah Sultana MP (@zarahsultana.bsky.social) March 8, 2026 at 2:10 PM
Retaliatory attacks by Iran have killed at least 11 Israelis and wounded nearly 2,000 others since February 28, according to Israel's government. No Israeli child deaths have been reported. Seven US troops and at least 15 people in Gulf Arab nations have also been killed by Iranian counterattacks.
While the world's focus is on Iran, Israeli occupation forces have continued killing and wounding people in Gaza and the West Bank of Palestine. Drop Site News reported Monday that eight Palestinians were killed in Gaza over the past 24 hours, including two women and at least as many children.
🚨 An Israeli drone strike in central Khan Younis has critically injured a young girl and killed her father. Julia Al-Qedra was preparing to leave for kindergarten when the strike hit. Her father, Ahmad Al-Qedra, who was accompanying her, was killed. Doctors are now fighting to save Julia’s life.
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— Drop Site (@dropsitenews.com) March 7, 2026 at 12:24 PM
More than 250,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded by Israeli forces since the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023. More than 20,000 children have been killed and over 44,000 others wounded. More than 1 in 4 fatalities have been children in a war for which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes, and Israel is facing a genocide case currently before the International Court of Justice.
Since the 9/11 attacks, US-led wars have left nearly 1 million people dead in more than half a dozen countries in the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa—over 400,000 of them civilians, according to the Costs of War Project at Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.
"Every war is a war on children, and once again we are seeing them pay the highest price for a conflict they neither started nor had a say in," Ingdal said Monday.
"Wars have laws, and children must be off limits in every conflict," she added. "World leaders must act urgently to prevent further escalation. There must be an immediate cessation of hostilities, and all parties must uphold international humanitarian law and do everything in their power to protect civilians—especially children.”
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