Daily Deportations to Honduras Leave Hundreds of Parents Separated From Children
Every single day for the past year, at least 300 immigrants have arrived at La Lima Airport in Honduras after being deported from the United States. A distressing pattern has emerged: many of these individuals are landing without their children, often with no knowledge of their whereabouts or who is caring for them.
Heartbreaking Accounts of Forced Separation
The Women's Refugee Commission, a nonprofit organization, has documented numerous cases of what advocates describe as a new form of forcible family separation. One mother was deported to Honduras and forced to leave her 6-month-old infant with her sister. Upon landing, she discovered her sister had also been detained, leaving her completely unaware of her child's location.
A father detained at his workplace begged immigration agents for a single phone call because his child was with a babysitter. Although he managed to make that call, allowing the babysitter to extend care for a few extra days, he was ultimately deported without his child.
In another case, a 22-year-old pregnant woman from Florida was picked up by immigration agents while traveling in Louisiana. She was detained for an entire month before being deported without her 2-year-old daughter. "They didn't ask me anything. They didn't talk to me, just to yell at me, to humiliate me," she recounted. "They never told me, 'You have a daughter, you can bring her,' because I would have brought her to Honduras. She is glued to me."
Yet another woman was detained while dropping off her disabled son at school. "He doesn't even know that I was deported," she said, noting that she was never given the option to bring him with her.
A Systematic Pattern of Separation
Zain Lakhani, director of migrant rights and justice at the Women's Refugee Commission, estimates that hundreds of parents deported to Honduras have been separated from their families. Immigration advocates argue that what is occurring represents a systematic family separation program, distinguished by its speed, scale, and specific targeting methods.
Individuals are being apprehended during routine traffic stops, outside their children's schools, or while commuting to work. They are then rapidly removed from the country within days, often leaving their children and loved ones completely unaware of their detention and deportation.
"I would say these are very different types of deportation, engineered to lead to family separation," stated Michele Heisler, medical director at Physicians for Human Rights, an international NGO that traveled to Honduras alongside WRC to document human rights abuses.
Official Responses and Policy Changes
Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, told media outlets that Immigration and Customs Enforcement does not separate families when deporting a parent or primary caregiver. "Parents are asked if they want to be removed with their children or ICE will place the children with a safe person the parent designates," she explained. "This is consistent with past administrations' immigration enforcement."
However, DHS did not respond to questions about whether it is currently tracking family separations. The White House referred inquiries to DHS when contacted for comment.
This current form of family separation differs from the notorious policies of the first Trump administration, which separated families at the U.S.-Mexico border, holding children and parents in different detention facilities upon arrival. Even during that period, considered the most sweeping example of family separation in recent history, more robust directives were in place aimed at minimizing such separations.
In 2013, the Obama administration established parental interest directives, instructing ICE and Customs and Border Protection to avoid detaining individuals who identified as parents or primary caregivers to keep families together. This policy remained largely unchanged through both the Obama and Biden administrations, though both still separated many migrant families. The first Trump administration adopted a somewhat weaker but overall similar policy.
Recent Policy Shifts and Implementation Failures
This changed dramatically in July of last year when the current administration issued a new parental interest directive containing only two mandatory requirements for immigration agents detaining parents: they must ask detained individuals whether they are parents, and they must provide detained immigrants the opportunity to decide if they wish to be deported with their children.
In practice, however, advocates assert that the administration is not even complying with this watered-down policy. "Those are the only two ironclad obligations or requirements that remain... and they're not even doing that," Lakhani emphasized.
Because the administration has focused extensively on finding and detaining individuals who have been living in the U.S. for extended periods, rather than stopping people at the border, officials have been apprehending more immigrants when they are not with their children.
The Human Toll and Lack of Data
During a six-day trip to Honduras, WRC and PHR advocates spoke with dozens of immigrants stepping off planes from the U.S. who reported not being given the option to either contact their children or bring them along. Honduran service providers conducting intake at the airport and documenting cases of family separation stated they have seen hundreds of adults separated from their children, according to WRC's report.
"All one could see was women crying because their children were taken from them... We were all crying on the plane, all of us, thinking about our children," a 38-year-old mother separated from her 5-year-old child told WRC and PHR.
Heisler noted, "Women would come in just sobbing, saying they weren't even asked if they had kids." One service provider working at La Lima's reception area reported that approximately 80% of the people they interviewed had similar stories of family separation.
"We didn't go in thinking we were going to find so many instances of really forcible family separation," Heisler admitted.
Scale of the Crisis
With at least 300 migrants being deported to La Lima daily, and deportation efforts accelerating over the last six months, the lowest estimate of people who have landed at La Lima airport since July exceeds 54,000. Advocates describe this as a shocking and unprecedented number of individuals being removed from the United States.
While lengthy detentions present their own problems, they theoretically allow parents more time to advocate for themselves and inform ICE that they have children. However, WRC and PHR spoke with dozens of parents who were detained and deported in just four or five days, during which they were moved between multiple facilities.
"You have no opportunity to really advocate for yourself, or to be able to tell anyone: 'I have children. I want to bring my children with me,'" Lakhani explained.
Challenges of Reunification
Once someone is deported without their child, the process and possibility for reunification become extremely difficult. According to a 2024 DHS report, of the 2,700 children separated from their parents under the first Trump administration, more than 1,300 have still not been reunited with their parents.
Advocates told media outlets that Honduras lacks the infrastructure or resources to facilitate parent-child reunification. Similarly, child welfare agencies in the U.S. do not possess the necessary resources for this complex work, which often involves complicated third-country reunifications requiring significant time and coordination.
Broader Impact on Families
The administration's hard-line immigration enforcement is affecting families across the United States, even those still together. Many parents have chosen to be detained with their children to maximize their chances of staying together. According to The Marshall Project, there are now six times as many children detained in ICE detention centers as there were at the beginning of 2025.
Children as young as 18 months old are being held in facilities like the one in Dilley, Texas, where 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos was detained after ICE took the preschooler and his father into custody in a Minneapolis suburb. Many of these children are being held far beyond the 20-day legal limit.
"The levels of psychological trauma that the children are facing and will face is really heartbreaking," Heisler stated. "We're going to have a generation of children who are deeply, deeply traumatized."
The lack of comprehensive data tracking where children end up after their parents are deported leaves advocates struggling to understand how to help and could result in families being separated for extended periods or never being reunited at all. More than 30 children in seven states have entered foster care after their parents were deported, according to a recent investigation, with likely many more cases going unrecorded.
