Takeaways from the AP's report on children who have been separated from their parents a second time

In 2018, when he was just 3 years old, Ederson Galicia Alva 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 and ultimately sent back to Guatemala, despite legal protections meant to keep them and families like theirs together.

After nearly a year in the indigenous highlands of Guatemala, Ederson’s family was finally allowed to return to Florida last week, following a federal judge’s order that the government had acted illegally.

Now, eight years since President Donald Trump’s forcible border separations triggered global outrage and came to an official halt, an Associated Press investigation has found that the government has re-separated dozens of children from their families, despite a landmark legal settlement meant to keep them together. Some of their parents have been locked in immigration detention facilities for months, and others deported back to their home countries after being taken from their families once again. In some cases, immigration officials conducting interior sweeps deported people despite discovering they were legally off limits for removal, according to emails obtained by AP.

Here are highlights from the AP’s reporting:

Trump’s second administration has vowed to deport more than 1 million people per year. Federal agents have been plucking people from their communities so swiftly that, according to the Brookings Institution, now the parents of tens of thousands of children have been detained.

Family separations often look different from Trump’s first term. In 2018, Ederson and other children at the border were forcibly taken from their parents, who were jailed separately and charged criminally with illegal entry. 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 families at the border 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.

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.” Bis said 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 recently was allowed to return, but their status is still on shaky ground.

In late 2017, immigration officials began forcibly separating parents and children at the U.S.-Mexico border, under a policy championed by Stephen Miller, Trump’s then-senior policy advisor and now White House deputy chief of staff. ACLU filed a class action lawsuit in February 2018 to halt the practice called 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. It wasn’t until thousands of families were torn apart that a judge ordered the government to end separations, saying it caused “lasting, excruciating harm.” According to 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 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. The ACLU also provided AP with new data surrounding Ms. L class members who have been detained and deported during the second Trump administration.

Under a 2023 settlement agreement, Ms. L class members — including separated parents, children and other close relatives — got special legal protections, pathways toward asylum and access to attorneys, work permits and support services. And for eight years, advocates and attorneys tried to help the families reunite and recover, and offered them everything from job placement to psychological counseling, benefits meant “to prevent any ongoing harm caused by the initial separation,” according to the settlement.

As deportations have risen in the last year and a half, attorneys say many separated families have become more fearful about filling out government paperwork and don’t know they can apply for asylum, a key settlement benefit that expires in December. The administration also hasn’t said if it will extend a current, trimmed-back legal services contract for families that ends in August. Another deadline is looming as well: thousands of separated families need to request for any pending removal orders to be cancelled by December, or lose their ability to stay in the U.S. legally.

Each morning since Alva López was deported back to Guatemala last June, she has checked her phone for word of when her family could return. Money started drying up. The children began forgetting their English slang. Briseidy, now 14, worried she would drift away from her American friends. Finally, two weeks ago, there was news: the government would bring her family back to Florida on an American Airlines flight, under a judge’s order.

At the end of May, passports and travel documents in hand, the family flew to Miami. Ederson said it felt like a miracle. But soon after landing, immigration officials began questioning Alva López, taking her photo and fingerprints once again and picking apart her documents. Their stay in the U.S. may be short. An immigration official granted her just two weeks’ humanitarian parole.

The government declined to comment specifically on Alva López’s case.

“I still haven’t told the children” about the two weeks’ parole, Alva López said on her first day back in her old West Palm Beach neighborhood. “They’re going to worry that the same thing will happen again.”

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Burke reported from San Francisco. Pérez reported from San Martín Cuchumatán, Guatemala. AP photographer Rebecca Blackwell in Miami contributed reporting.

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Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org or https://www.ap.org/tips/

Mirsy Maricela Alva López, right, and her children, Ederson, center, and Briseidy pose for photos at their house in San Martín Cuchumatán, Guatemala, Thursday, April 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

The U.S. Army found many systemic breakdowns that led to last year’s midair collision between an American Airlines jet and a Black Hawk helicopter near Washington, D.C., and recommended numerous steps the military should take to prevent future tragedies.

The military has not publicly released its report on the deadliest plane crash on U.S. soil in over two decades, but eventually shared it late last week with families of the 67 people who died.

For months, many of the families have been pressuring the Army in daily social media posts to release the report, which was completed in May. The Associated Press obtained a copy on Thursday. The Army did not immediately comment.

Former Army Black Hawk pilot Tim Lilley, whose son Sam Lilley was the first officer on the American Airlines jet, said he still wants more details from the military. Some information in the report was redacted and the military assigned responsibility for its shortcomings broadly across the Army.

“The Army owes the families and the American public a full accounting of how these risks were allowed to persist, who was responsible for the decisions that allowed them to persist and what will be done to make sure this never happens again,” said Lilley, who is a commercial jet captain today.

While the report largely reinforces the National Transportation Safety Board's conclusions, the civilian investigation was broader and NTSB members focused on years of warning signs missed by the Federal Aviation Administration. The Army report highlighted how the air traffic controller in the tower at Reagan National Airport could have prevented the crash, but also acknowledged the military's own failings.

The report recommended that the Army look beyond Washington, D.C., to study the practices in every major city where its helicopters operate to ensure similar risks aren't present. An Army official said the review of helicopter flights in other cities, including Los Angeles and the Seattle-Tacoma region, is ongoing. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the situation.

The lieutenant general who authored the report said “breakdowns across all layers of conflict management caused this accident” but “the most salient contributing factor was the two broken radio transmissions” that contributed to the helicopter crew not identifying Flight 5342 as it was circling to land on Reagan National Airport's alternate runway. The military pilots were wearing night-vision goggles that limited their field of vision and made it difficult to spot the plane amid the lights of the city.

The poorly designed helicopter route in use at the time of the crash provided only a scant 75 feet (23 meters) of vertical separation between a helicopter and a plane landing on Reagan’s secondary runway, and that was only true if the helicopter stuck to the riverbank. This did not allow enough separation to account for the accepted level of error in a Black Hawk’s altimeter, and the NTSB found the helicopter was flying nearly 100 feet (30 meters) higher than its instruments read.

The NTSB said in a letter to the Army last week that the agency is pleased with the progress being made on seven of the eight recommendations to the Army. That contrasts with the FAA, which the NTSB has faulted for failing to implement roughly one-third of the recommendations to that safety regulator.

The Army report said the controller should have provided the helicopter crew with more details about exactly where the plane was to help the pilots spot it, and the controller should have warned the plane about the helicopter headed toward it. The FAA has prohibited controllers from relying on pilots to maintain visual separation in busy airspace since this crash.

The main group of families of passengers on the plane, who were flying from Wichita, Kansas, said the report reinforces their call for Congress to pass aviation safety reforms and require aircraft to be equipped with systems that will help pilots know where traffic in the air is.

“It’s a simple concept anyone can understand: aircraft should be able to see each other in the sky. The technology is proven. All that’s required is the political will to do the right thing,” the Families of Flight 5342 group said in a statement Thursday.

“We have waited long enough. We waited for the NTSB. We waited for the Army. Both investigations are complete, and both make clear that collision avoidance technology must be part of the solution. There is nothing left for Congress to wait for,” they said.

Both the House and Senate passed different aviation safety bills, but lawmakers are still working on a compromise piece of legislation to bring up for a vote in both houses of Congress.

Associated Press Writer Konstantin Toropin in Washington contributed.

FILE - Search efforts are seen around a wreckage site of a deadly midair collision between an American Airlines jet and an Army helicopter in the Potomac River near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Jan. 31, 2025, in Arlington, Va. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)