AP investigation found DHS and ICE re-separated dozens of children from parents in violation of 2023 court settlement

On June 4, 2026, the Associated Press published an investigation finding that the Trump administration has re-separated dozens of children from parents who were already separated once during Trump's first term, in violation of a 2023 federal court settlement in Ms. L v. ICE that guaranteed the affected families legal status, asylum pathways, and support services through December 2031. AP reviewed government emails and legal filings and interviewed ACLU attorneys, finding that in some cases immigration officials deported people despite discovering they were legally protected class members off-limits for removal.

The investigation documented Ederson Galicia Alva, first separated from his mother, Mirsy Maricela Alva López, at the border in 2018 at age three. In June 2025, federal agents detained Alva López near a Florida landscaping job, and the family was deported to Guatemala, where they lived in poverty for eleven months before a federal judge ruled the government had acted illegally and ordered their return in late May 2026. AP also documented an unnamed father, separated from his daughter at the border in 2017 and reunited with his family in Florida in 2021, who was detained again in October 2025 and held first at the "Alligator Alcatraz" detention center in the Florida Everglades and then at Camp East Montana in Texas, where he reported being fed moldy, worm-infested food; he was released in April 2026 after the ACLU filed a motion on behalf of Ms. L class members.

DHS acting assistant secretary Lauren Bis told AP that "DHS complies with all court orders" and that enforcing immigration law is "not optional." The ACLU's Lee Gelernt, lead counsel in the case that produced the settlement, said the government "is now detaining and deporting these same families" it was already found to have traumatized once. Attorneys working with separated families said the pattern has affected families across an accounting that now covers more than 11,800 people under the settlement.