Eleven-year-old Ederson Galicia Alva had just stepped off the plane and into the Miami airport’s dim hallways when federal agents pulled his mother aside for questioning. Again. A familiar panic surged. His excitement at soon being back at recess with his Florida classmates evaporated. Would the government take her away again?This was not the first time Ederson had faced such trauma. Mirsy Maricela Alva Lopez, a Guatemalan migrant who has been separated from her son Ederson twice, cries during an interview at her parents' house in San Martín Cuchumatán, Guatemala (Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)In 2018, when he was just three years old, Ederson was taken from his mother’s arms at the U.S.-Mexico border under the first Trump administration’s family separation policy and kept apart from her in a government facility for months. They were finally reunited after lawyers intervened. Then, in June of last year, he and his mother were separated a second time, despite legal protections designed to keep them and families like theirs together.He later joined his mother in Guatemala. After a destitute, torturous 11 months in the indigenous highlands, Ederson’s family was allowed to return to Florida last week, following a federal judge’s order that the government had acted illegally.Alva Lopez, right, embraces a relative as she and her children return to the home they all shared in West Palm Beach, Fla., nearly one year after being separated by the Trump administration (Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)Now, eight years after President Donald Trump’s forcible border separations officially ceased amid global condemnation, an Associated Press investigation has found that the government has re-separated dozens of children from their families, despite a landmark legal settlement intended to keep them together. Some of their parents have been held in immigration detention facilities for months; others have been deported back to their home countries after being taken from their families once again.In some cases, immigration officials conducting interior arrests deported individuals despite discovering they were legally off limits for removal, according to emails obtained by AP.The sun shines down onto Todos Santos Cuchumatan, Guatemala (Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)"Not only has the government refused to acknowledge the horror of the initial separations during Trump I, but it is now detaining and deporting these same families," said Lee Gelernt, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union and lead counsel in the lawsuit that ended the policy. "These children have suffered enough without re-traumatizing them."The current administration successfully campaigned on an anti-immigration platform. Under its second term, the administration has vowed to deport more than one million people per year. Alva López, right, and her children, Ederson, center, and Briseidy pose for photos at their house in San Martín Cuchumatán (Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)Federal agents have been removing individuals from their communities so swiftly that, according to the Brookings Institution, the parents of tens of thousands of children have now been detained.This time, family separations often look different from the first Trump administration. In 2018, Ederson and other children at the border were taken from their parents, who were detained separately and overwhelmingly charged criminally with illegal entry. The architect of much of the Trump administration’s immigration policy, Stephen Miller, is shown here (AFP/Getty)Then, the government was unable to reunite them for months because adults’ and children’s information was kept in different computer systems. A judge barred the government from separating most families at the border and ordered the government to bring the families back together after the ACLU filed a class action lawsuit. Later, a court settlement banned most family separations to deter immigration until December 2031.Now, eight years after President Donald Trump’s forcible border separations came to an official halt following global outrage, an Associated Press investigation has found that the government has re-separated dozens of children from their families (Getty)Today, if parents are arrested or deported under the president’s push for mass deportations, they are being made to choose whether to leave their children behind in the United States."DHS complies with all court orders, even as radical NGOs shop for the most favorable forum and activist judges seek to thwart our operations," acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, said in response to AP requests for comment about the government’s policies toward separated families.Government attorneys have argued in recent court filings that there are no legal restrictions on "the government’s statutory authority to execute orders of removal." “Not only has the government refused to acknowledge the horror of the initial separations during Trump I, but it is now detaining and deporting these same families,” said Lee Gelernt, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union (AP)Bis added that enforcing immigration law was "not optional," and that "every removal of an illegal alien helps restore order and reinforce the rule of law."Ederson’s family was recently allowed to return, but their status remains precarious.After being taken from his mother, Mirsy Maricela Alva López, and confined to a government shelter in Arizona as a toddler for four and a half months, Ederson barely recognized her once they were reunited, she said. Vivid nightmares haunted him throughout his time in elementary school, where he learned to read in English in classrooms amid lush lawns and palm trees less than 10 miles from Mar-a-Lago, (AP)Vivid nightmares haunted him throughout his time in elementary school, where he learned to read in English in classrooms amid lush lawns and palm trees less than 10 miles from Mar-a-Lago, President Trump’s Winter White House.Once a federal judge approved a settlement to the class action suit under the Biden administration, Ederson’s family and those like his gained legal status to stay in the U.S., with pathways for residency and asylum, and his mother received a work permit. And after months of mental health services to address his ongoing fear that his mother would never return, in early June last year — about five months after the beginning of the current administration’s second term and the president’s resumed anti-immigration push — his therapist finally said he had made so much progress he could put his weekly sessions on pause.Under a 2023 settlement agreement signed by the Biden administration, Ms. L class members — including separated parents, children and other close relatives — received special legal protections (Getty)Two weeks later, Alva López was stopped by federal agents as she and co-workers were en route to a landscaping job near Mar-a-Lago. The agents, wearing brown uniforms, never gave a reason for the stop or identified themselves before transferring Alva López to two Florida jails, then to ICE custody in Louisiana, and finally to a plane full of shackled deportees heading to Guatemala City, she said."I felt the very same thing I went through the first time," Alva López said, weeping. "I was living it all over again."President Donald Trump listens at an event about coal (AP)Alva López was separated from Ederson and his older sister, Briseidy, for a week and not given the chance to speak with an immigration official about her status or legal protections, said Kelly Kribs, an attorney with the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights, which has supported Alva López’s family’s return to the U.S.When she finally managed to call Ederson and Briseidy, they couldn’t stop sobbing. Alva López said she asked her sister to buy plane tickets for them to Guatemala City. She met them the next day at the airport and traveled with them nine more hours down highways and rutted roads to reach San Martín Cuchumatán, a hamlet in the highlands where the children were born.A woman walks past signage for the US Department of Homeland Security in Washington, DC (AFP via Getty Images)The three of them shared a tiny bedroom with a dusty floor, with Alva López’s parents and brother, in an adobe-brick home with a sheet-metal roof, nothing like the leafy cul-de-sacs of South Florida. The school, where all lessons are in Spanish, was a mile’s walk, and none of the children in town spoke English, Ederson said.Instead of clocking in to trim the gardens of West Palm Beach estates, each day Alva López fed the chickens and ducks in a small coop behind the house, washed the family’s laundry by hand and cooked meals on an open fire.A patch on the uniform of a US Border Patrol agent in Imperial County, California (EPA)And Ederson was back to waking up at night, fearing his future. At Northmore Elementary School, he had been doing well in fifth grade. In Guatemala, he repeated fourth grade, this time in Spanish, and was quizzed on the history and culture of a country he barely knew. His friendships weren’t as close as in West Palm Beach. Sometimes when he felt sad, he watched the school’s old online videos to see his old friends.In late 2017, immigration officials began forcibly separating parents and children at the U.S.-Mexico border, under a policy championed by en Miller (AFP/Getty)"We used to play and chat. Sometimes they would help me when I didn’t understand the lesson, and I would help them with math," he said, fighting back tears. "I have very few friends here."Ederson still doesn’t want to talk about the separations, and he can’t stop asking his mother why she went to work that day. But he is clear on one thing: he never wants to be apart from his mother again.In late 2017, immigration officials began forcibly separating parents and children at the U.S.-Mexico border, under a policy championed by Stephen Miller, then-senior policy advisor to President Trump, who is now White House deputy chief of staff. US State Police and Border Patrol agents patrol the area of El Paso, Texas (AFP/Getty)After advocates learned of the practice, the ACLU filed a lawsuit in February 2018 to halt it, known as Ms. L v. U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement, on behalf of a Congolese mother the Trump administration separated from her 7-year-old daughter for four months. It later became a class action suit.It wasn’t until thousands of families were torn apart that a judge ordered the government to end separations, stating it caused "lasting, excruciating harm." According to the ACLU’s most recent accounting, the number of separated parents and children, and their impacted family members covered by the settlement, is far greater than had been previously reported — over 11,800 — and because the government deported so many people before the practice was banned, the full scope may never be known. Police hold a barricade as protestors push outside Delaney Hall, which is being used as an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center, in Newark (AFP/Getty)The ACLU also provided AP with new information surrounding Ms. L class members who have been detained and deported during the current administration, including that dozens of children were re-separated. Legal filings in the Ms. L case and other immigration attorneys working with separated families also detailed the re-separations of children.Under a 2023 settlement agreement signed by the Biden administration, Ms. L class members — including separated parents, children and other close relatives — received special legal protections, pathways toward asylum and access to attorneys, work permits and support services. The Inauguration of Donald J. Trump as the 47th President (Getty)And over eight years, advocates and attorneys have been trying to help the families reunite and recover, traveling to the Guatemala rainforest and remote Honduran villages to inform class members of their rights, and offering them to apply for everything from humanitarian parole to work authorization permits to psychological counseling, benefits meant "to prevent any ongoing harm caused by the initial separation," according to the settlement.That changed when the current administration began its second term. Support for separated families was never encoded by an act of Congress, and soon it started shrinking.First, funding for legal services was temporarily cut off. Instead, the current administration said it would charge families $1,000 each to enter or stay in the country. People walk outside the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on June 4, 2026 (AFP/Getty)Then, attorneys said, some parents were told to appear for more frequent ICE check-ins, and ordered to wear ankle monitors to record their movements. Many class members lost access to counseling.By late last year, emails show the government had deported some protected family members even after being told by the ACLU that they were off limits as protected Ms. L class members.Seven days before Christmas, ACLU attorney Natalie Behr wrote an urgent email to Department of Justice contacts, saying her team had learned that a protected relative was once again in ICE custody."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," Behr wrote.A Washington DOJ trial attorney emailed back, saying he would ask ICE. ACLU attorneys followed up.By the day after Christmas, it was already too late. He had been deported.The problem is still surfacing. This is a photograph taken of the Welcome to Florida sign marking the state line at the border at a highway rest stop with palm trees on a sunny day with during autumn of 2020. (Getty Images/iStock)While the government is required by judge’s orders to immediately tell the ACLU when Ms. L class members are detained and to return re-separated families who have been deported, the current administration only disclosed in April that it had deported another protected person to Guatemala back in September, court filings show.The same thing nearly happened to one of Alva López’s neighbors, who was picked up in West Palm Beach a few months after her deportation. The father also had done landscaping near Mar-a-Lago and had been separated at the U.S.-Mexico border in 2017 from his daughter. Under the first Trump administration, he was swiftly returned to Guatemala. As ACLU attorneys and government lawyers hashed out what separated families were due, he came back to Florida in 2021 to reunite with his children, one of whom had been released after spending months in a government detention facility.In October, the government locked him up, first in an immigration detention center in the Florida Everglades, colloquially known as Alligator Alcatraz, then inside Camp East Mon