Parents deported, children left behind: WI advocates warn of growing crisis

The Women’s Refugee Commission says some parents had conveyed firm interests and even signed documentation requesting their children accompany them, but they were still deported without them. (Adobe Stock)

By Public News Service

January 6, 2026

By Judith Ruiz-Branch

New research is shedding light on the issue of parent-child separation among immigrant families, which has become more pervasive in Wisconsin and across the country under heightened federal immigration enforcement. Migrant advocates called it a crisis in need of urgent attention.The Women’s Refugee Commission, an international nonprofit, recently interviewed some of the hundreds of deportees they said are arriving in Honduras daily.

Zain Lakhani, director of migrant rights and justice for the commission, said they found deported parents are overwhelmingly not being allowed to take their children with them or arrange child care, even when they are as young as two months old. She pointed out it violates U.S. immigration policy.

“We spoke with dozens and dozens of parents who were coming off the plane, some inconsolable because they did not know where their children are,” Lakhani reported. “The vast majority of whom had never been asked if they had children at the time that they were arrested.”

Despite a directive implemented last year weakening protections for noncitizen parents, Lakhani noted Immigration and Customs Enforcement is still required to ask anyone they arrest if they are a parent and document their information. Current law also states they must give parents facing deportation the opportunity to decide what happens to their children.

In Wisconsin, immigration arrests more than doubled last year.

Lakhani acknowledged noncitizen parents and their children have always faced separation due to deportation but what they are seeing now is unprecedented. She stressed the rapid rate at which people are being deported makes it nearly impossible for them to access legal counsel or other resources, and consistent monitoring and tracking are lacking. Lakhani argued what is happening now is why parental interest policies were created.

“To ensure that this kind of family separation, rapid ripping and failure to track, parents not knowing where their kids are, that didn’t happen – that’s what those policies were meant to govern,” Lakhani emphasized. “That is what we are seeing violated. This is something that is just substantially more extreme than we’ve ever seen before.”

Lakhani added her organization is working with social service providers, child welfare agencies and other professionals in foreign countries to fill in information gaps and develop comprehensive tracking systems. She underscored the separations represent policy choices rather than necessities and argued the government should uphold policies designed to preserve family unity.