New Data Reveals Rapid Transfers and Deportations Driving a New Family Separation Crisis in the US 

New data published this week in The New York Times illustrates the startling pace at which Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is transferring and deporting people across the United States.

According to the reporting, ICE operations now average approximately 67,000 internal transfers per month, moving through multiple detention centers in less than seven weeks. The data reveals the scope and scale of the profound human cost of the US government’s current approach to immigration enforcement—a trend that is resulting in a new family separation crisis.

Rapid transfers and rushed deportations have a catastrophic impact on parents who can find themselves thousands of miles away from their children within days of their arrest. On a recent trip to Honduras, Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC) and Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) spoke with dozens of parents who had been deported within four or five days of being detained, often transferred between multiple facilities during that time.

From these conversations, we documented clear violations of longstanding US policy to preserve family unity: Most of the parents we spoke to were never asked if they had children, were never given the opportunity to contact their children or the person who was caring for them, and were deported without being given an opportunity to bring their children with them.

“For more than a decade, the United States has had policies in place to protect families from long-term, catastrophic separation,” said Zain Lakhani, Director of Migrants’ Rights and Justice at the Women’s Refugee Commission. “But the data illuminates a larger issue: Immigration enforcement is moving too fast to safeguard basic human rights and dignity.

“Parents, many of whom have lived in the United States for years or decades, are being separated from their children overnight. What these numbers don’t show are the thousands of families now at risk of long-term separation, and the profound trauma and grief experienced by children and parents who don’t know when they will see each other again.”