Child Re‑Separated After Trump Administration Push – A Family’s Fight to Stay Together","description":"After five years of being separated from his mother, 11‑year‑old Ederson Galicia faces new persecution at Miami airport. The case exposes the resurgence of family separations despite a federal settlement that was supposed to end the practice.","summary":"The story of Ederson Galicia and his mother Mirsy Maricela Alva López highlights how families have been forcibly separated again despite legal protections. After a five‑year ordeal in Guatemala, the family has returned to Florida only to be targeted by federal agents once more. Their experience underscores the broader policy failure to uphold the settlement that barred such separations. Interviews with the family, ACLU attorneys, and DHS spokespersons paint a tense picture of ongoing government pressure on protected families.","image":"https://dims.apnews.com/dims4/default/6a02930/2147483647/strip/true/crop/6000x4000+0+0/resize/599x399!/format/webp/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fassets.apnews.com%2F3a%2F1b%2Fe424d296e0b128c446011160e4b3%2F78f68f47029f4739957ea4315821b4f5","text":"<p><b>Miami</b>, 2026. Eleven‑year‑old Ederson Galicia Alva watched the airplane wheel spin out of view as federal agents slipped his mother aside for questioning. “I was only a kid,” Ederson recalled. The moment that should have felt like a fresh start ended with a new wave of fear.</p> <p>In 2018, at the age of three, Ederson was taken from his mother’s arms at the U.S.–Mexico border under the first Trump administration’s family‑separation policy, and the family was kept apart for months in a government facility. Lawyers eventually secured a reunion, but in June 2025 a second separation drew them again into the hands of federal authorities, this time in the Florida suburbs of Miami.</p> <p>Ederson and his mother had fled to Guatemala in late 2024 after enduring a mentally and physically exhausting 11‑month stay in the remote highlands. A federal judge’s order later declared the government’s actions illegal, allowing the family to return to Florida in early May. The return felt like a miracle, but it was short‑lived. Within days of landing in Miami, DHS agents had Alva López in for a new round of questioning.</p> <p><b>“The government refused to acknowledge the horror of the initial separations and has now re‑separated these families,”</b> said Lee Gelernt, attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and lead counsel in the lawsuit that ended the policy. “These children have suffered enough without a new trauma.”</p> <p>Under the settled terms signed in 2023, families who were separated were granted legal protections, pathways toward asylum, access to attorneys, work permits and counseling services. The settlement also cut off illegal mass deportations and prohibited new separations until December 2031.</p> <p>Despite this, the Trump administration’s second term saw a resurgence of mass deportation claims and a rapid expansion of federal detentions. The ACLU filed a report showing that dozens of children had been re‑separated, and that protected family members were detained or deported without notice. In one email, an ACLU attorney pressed the Department of Justice for a release of a detainee who had been illegally held: <i>“We ask that you tell us why we were not notified of this class member’s detention within 24 hours. … this class member should not be removed,”</i> the email read.</p> <p>DHS spokesperson Lauren Bis said, <i>“DHS complies with all court orders, even as radical NGOs seek to thwart our operations.”</i> The statement underscored the agency’s insistence that enforcement is mandatory and that every removal restores law and order.</p> <p>When Alva López was last arrested, the process was bewildering. The agents, in brown uniforms, had no time to explain why she was stopped, nor did they give her a reason for the arrest. They transferred her to two Florida jails, then to ICE custody in Louisiana, and finally onto a flight bound for Guatemala City. The family was separated again for a week, before she earned her way back to the U.S. almost a year later under a judge’s order.</p> <p>Ederson’s view of life in Guatemala starkly contrasted with his memories of Miami. He described a tiny bedroom, a dusty adobe brick house, and a school where all lessons were in Spanish. “I had very few friends here,” he said. He fought back tears at the thought of losing the only family he could keep together.</p> <p>These repeated separations are not isolated. The ACLU’s latest figures show that more than 11,800 families were affected by the settlement’s intended protection, and the true number of separations is likely even higher. Families report that they are often asked to attend routine ICE check‑ins or placed on ankle monitors, disrupting their lives and threatening the safety of the children who have never been at risk.</p> <p>At the court level, the government had admitted no legal barriers to removing protected families. It argued that its statutory authority to execute removal orders was unchecked. However, court filings revealed that the Biden administration signed a 2023 settlement that specifically barred the practice of family separation. The contradiction fuels distrust among families and advocates.</p> <p>For many, such as Alva López, the outcome is uncertain. She received only two weeks of humanitarian parole upon her return, and officials have re‑examined every document she held in immigration office. The last known ruling cleared her to return, but no follow‑up has occurred, leaving her and her children in limbo.</p> <p>The fight continues. ACLU attorneys, legal nonprofits and advocates continue to discover that dozens of children are still being separated, even after the settlement that should have ended the practice. They call on the court to enforce the settlement’s directives and to close the gaps that allow new, ill‑directive separations to continue.</p>
