The Brief

On the first day of his second term, President Donald Trump sat behind neat stacks of executive orders in the Oval Office and started signing. First, he pardoned the more than 1,500 “hostages,” as he called them, who’d been convicted or charged in connection with the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol. He went on to sign a slew of immigration-related orders, including one titled “Protecting The American People Against Invasion,” which called for a dramatic surge in border enforcement and, among other things, the dissolution of the Family Reunification Task Force.

The task force was born out of a federal settlement agreement, reached in 2023 between the Biden administration and the American Civil Liberties Union after a yearslong lawsuit, that required the government to reunite thousands of families who were forcibly separated during Trump’s first term. The separations were part of the Trump administration’s “Zero Tolerance” immigration policy, a crackdown on illegal border crossings in 2018. As reports emerged of weeping children being taken from their parents’ arms and languishing behind chain-link fences, the policy drew global condemnation for its inhumane treatment of people seeking asylum.

Asked by a reporter if he expected his new immigration orders to be challenged in the courts, Trump responded that he didn’t think they could be. “They’re very straight up,” he said.

Immigration and civil rights attorneys who work with separated families disagree, saying the sweeping changes will test the strength of the federal settlement agreement, which also banned most separations for eight years. Trump’s broad focus on total enforcement of all immigration laws, without specifying who exactly the orders apply to, has the ACLU and immigrant advocates on alert for anything that resembles a new family separation policy or undermines the settlement. And they’re spring-loaded to fight.

“We will be monitoring very closely to see whether the Trump administration faithfully applies the settlement,” said Lee Gelernt, the ACLU attorney who led the lawsuit. “And if they don't, we'll be back in court immediately.”

Nearly seven years after the Zero Tolerance policy, hundreds of children remain apart from their families. For the more than 3,000 families who have already been reunited and for thousands more making their way toward the border today, even a relatively minor or temporary policy change could jeopardize their claims for asylum.

“Basically, [the administration is] trying to shut down the border again to all asylum seekers,” said Laura Peña, director of the South Texas Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project (ProBAR). “And that is going to affect children. It is going to affect families.”

Here’s what to know about family separation under Trump, then and now.

A ‘shameful chapter’

To understand how so many families ended up separated, you have to go back to pre-Trump America. Unauthorized entry to the U.S. is illegal, but for decades, adults who crossed the border illegally with their children, many of whom were fleeing violence and persecution in their home countries, were generally not prosecuted for that infraction alone. Instead, families would either be allowed to stay in the U.S. pending immigration rulings or be deported together. But things changed after Trump took office in 2017.

That spring, the U.S. Border Patrol in El Paso, Texas, started toying with a new way to deter people from crossing the border illegally: prosecute every adult, including those crossing with kids. In April of 2018, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions took the policy border-wide, dubbing it “Zero Tolerance.”

“Having children does not give you immunity from arrest and prosecution,” Sessions later said of the policy.

When families were apprehended at the border, federal agents began sending children and their parents or guardians to separate holding facilities. A 14-year-old boy and his older sister, who had raised him, crossed the border into Texas, where they surrendered to the Border Patrol. “On the third day, they took me out of my cage and said I would be separated from my sister, but they didn’t tell me where I was going,” the boy later told a visitor from Human Rights Watch. “I don’t understand why they separated us. They didn’t give me a chance to say goodbye.”

Three months after the policy was formally implemented, the Trump administration began touting a dip in illegal border crossings but did not mention it was a small dip, and typical for that time of year. Meanwhile, border-area prosecutors complained that their dockets were overwhelmed by all the misdemeanor immigration cases and that people accused of serious crimes were slipping through the cracks.

But there was an even more problematic consequence of Zero Tolerance: the massive number of children who were suddenly in the care of the federal government. Children went to holding pens — many of them tents erected for the purpose — while they waited to be placed in shelters or foster homes. Over 40% of those detention centers were in California, Arizona and Texas. Humanitarian workers reported that federal authorities were not prepared to care for them, so older children took care of younger ones and illnesses went untreated.

Then, the government lost track of which children belonged to which parents.

Caseworkers and therapists asked traumatized kids who they came with, while immigration lawyers tried to calm hysterical parents who had no idea where authorities had taken their children. Many kids panicked, crying endlessly, or went catatonic. In one case, after Border Patrol agents forcibly removed a Honduran father’s 3-year-old son from his hands, the man became so agitated he had to be moved to a Texas jail, where he strangled himself to death.

The ACLU filed its class-action lawsuit on behalf of these families, Ms. L v. ICE, in February 2018.

In June of that year, under growing public pressure, Trump ordered an end to family separations without revoking Zero Tolerance. Separations slowed but didn’t stop. By the time Trump left office, well over 5,000 children had been taken from their families. While many had been reunited by then, some parents had been deported, leaving their children in the United States with other family members or in foster care.

In December 2023, the Biden administration settled the ACLU’s lawsuit by agreeing to aid in the reunification of separated families and to provide a pathway for their claims to asylum, including access to work permits, various forms of support and a three-year legal status called humanitarian parole.

Before approving the settlement, federal judge Dana Sabraw, of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California in San Diego, said family separation “represents one of the most shameful chapters in the history of our country.”

U.S. Border Patrol agents arrest migrants attempting to enter the United States in McAllen, Texas, in 2018.

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U.S. Customs and Border Protection

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Out of the frying pan

The ACLU’s Gelernt said there could be as many as 1,000 children still separated from their parents or guardians. Those families have been identified using the sparse records kept by the Trump administration during Zero Tolerance, which often yield little more than a name. The government and a coalition of nonprofit advocacy organizations have not been able to find them.

Lesly Tayes, an attorney in Guatemala, has been working to track down separated parents by combing through Guatemalan government records for information on their possible whereabouts. When she finds them, often in rural indigenous communities, she helps them travel to the Guatemalan capital to formally regain custody of their kids. But some parents Tayes worked with had never been to a city in their lives. “I had to support them with transportation or hotels,” she said. “Many of them didn't even speak Spanish.”

Parents who want to join their children in the U.S. and seek asylum often need help removing bureaucratic obstacles first; a sibling may need a passport for the journey or a legal guardian proof of their relationship with the child from whom they were separated.

Even after families are together again in the United States, their struggle is hardly over.

Alfonso Mercado, a psychologist in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, has spent the last several years conducting clinical research and consulting as an expert witness in family separation cases at the border. “There was trauma everywhere,” he said. “These children were experiencing difficulties integrating into an environment that abused them,” by which he meant the United States.

Joanna Dreby, a sociologist at the State University of New York at Albany who has studied the impact of immigration policies on families for the past two decades, said that even after separated families are reunited, parents and children can struggle to repair their relationships. In some cases, children who were separated when very young are reunited with parents they don’t remember.

“Kids might be like, ‘Why did they even go? Why did they do that? It led to this mess,’” Dreby said.

The Ms. L settlement agreement promises that, once reunified in the United States, families will be supported with mental health and other medical care, housing and legal assistance and the ability to apply for work permits. But advocates say these resources have fallen short of what’s needed.

“The increase in mental health services for this population is still very scarce and very limited,” Mercado said. “There's no continuity of care.”

And in the U.S., families face an avalanche of urgent problems. Tayes said parents and guardians often wait months to get authorization to work. “Some of them were struggling with food, housing. It wasn’t easy for them,” she said.

Hanging over these families is the specter of another deportation. According to the ACLU, the 2023 court settlement should supersede any immigration-related orders from the Trump administration. But the agreement doesn’t guarantee asylum, and the application process can be difficult to navigate, even with the help of an attorney. Non-governmental organizations serving Ms L. class members say they have struggled to provide pro bono legal help, especially after family separations were no longer a front-page issue and funding sources dried up.

The question of legal status can be complicated by the fact that members of separated families are often pursuing separate immigration cases. Children’s asylum claims, for example, were often filed after the initial separation, when the government designated them as “unaccompanied.”

“If [parents] lose their asylum cases,” Gelernt said, “then they're going to be in real trouble of being removed and/or re-separated from their children.”

Separations continue

In settling Ms. L, the federal government agreed to halt further family separation at the border through 2031, though there are exceptions that have allowed hundreds more separations since the settlement went into effect. For example, parents and children crossing the border illegally are still detained separately when the adults are deemed a national security or public safety risk, a danger to their children or if they’ve been charged with a felony other than crossing the border without authorization. However, the wording of the exceptions allows for broad interpretation. “You can basically run an 18-wheeler through them,” said one immigration law expert with knowledge of family separations.

Peña, whose organization ProBAR is a project of the American Bar Association, said cases in which border crossers are flagged for national security reasons are hard for attorneys like her to challenge because they often involve classified information. “The government can cite national security risk without revealing what information exactly is underlying that determination,” she said. “So it's hard to determine the source of the risk and advocate for family reunification.”

If a parent is flagged under one of the exceptions, they often go into federal immigration custody while their child goes to a shelter operated by the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Many parents are later released from custody if they successfully fight their case, but because the government has become legally responsible for their children’s welfare, strict guidelines kick in for releasing them into the care of someone else — even their parents. As a result, it can take much longer to reunite a family than to separate them.

The settlement agreement mandates that families who are separated be given written notice of the reason. Agencies have to facilitate communication between parents and children, and if parents are being deported, they must be given the option to be deported with or without their children. But Peña said this doesn’t always happen: “There are certain rights that the parents have under this settlement agreement that they're not going to know about if they don't have a lawyer who is also educated on these.”

The ACLU believes they should be notified if class members are picked up for removal, but Gelernt acknowledges the government may hold a different view. DHS did not respond to questions about how it will handle those encounters.

Gelernt said the ACLU is relying on organizations like Peña’s to report apparent patterns in immigration enforcement. Cases of parents being flagged under the exceptions could suddenly increase, for example, creating what, in effect, becomes a new separation policy. If that happens, Gelernt said, “We'd go back to court and say, it can't be that four out of five parents all of a sudden are abusing their children, or four out of every five parents are a public safety threat to the United States.”

He thinks the Trump administration knows better than to try to renegotiate or oppose the settlement agreement or to reestablish a formal separation policy. “I'd be surprised if they do forcible separation again, given the outcry against it,” he said. “But I've been wrong before about where they're willing to go.”

The next chapter

President Trump signs executive orders in the Oval Office on Jan. 21, 2025.

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The White House

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Attorneys and immigrants’ rights advocates say it’s too early to tell how Trump’s spiking the task force, which has been a collaboration between the departments of Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, State, and Justice, will impact reunification efforts. The group’s main purpose in recent months has been to determine whether separated families were eligible for relief under the settlement agreement and to smooth the way for reunification.

The Ms. L settlement agreement remains in effect, Gelernt said, so even without a task force, the Trump administration will have to do something to meet its requirements.

The White House could not immediately be reached for comment as to whether the Trump administration intends to honor the court-ordered settlement. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which houses several federal agencies involved in immigration issues, did not respond to the same question by publication time.

NGOs working with separated families said that, so far, the government appears to be meeting its obligations under the settlement.

Earlier this month, the task force’s website was updated to reflect the new secretaries of Homeland Security and the State Department, Kristi Noem and Marco Rubio, and to remove references to the Biden-Harris administration.

The settlement agreement stipulates that the federal website where separated families can register for relief, Together.gov, has to stay up and that the registration process has to remain open until December 2026. Gelernt worries that potential class members may be afraid to come forward in the current enforcement climate but urges them to register: “Otherwise, they are very vulnerable.”

Even if the dismantling of the task force is only symbolic, Gelernt sees it as a tactic to erase Zero Tolerance from the collective consciousness. “That they immediately eliminated the task force highlights the Trump administration’s failure to admit there was such a policy, much less acknowledge the brutal abuse it inflicted on little children,” he said.

And even without a formal policy of family separation, sweeping changes to the bureaucracy — especially when they’re rushed — can get messy.

Peña worries that, as Trump’s orders take effect, there may not be clear guidance for immigration authorities on the ground. “Law enforcement agencies could really be looking at anybody who's not a citizen and trying to figure out, ‘OK, are they a priority or not?’” she said. “Because of the complexity, a lot of people who should not be on this priority list are going to get caught up in it. And that's where we're going to see mass family separations, potentially not just at the border, but across the nation.”

The ACLU believes they should be notified if class members are picked up for removal, but Gelernt acknowledges the government may hold a different view. DHS did not respond to questions about how it will handle those encounters.

Erika Pinheiro, executive director of Al Otro Lado, an organization that supports migrants on both the U.S. and Mexican sides of the border, said her office has been fielding calls from separated families asking how the new executive orders could affect them. “Unfortunately, we can tell them what we know, which isn't much at this point.”

Dreby, the sociologist, has observed that the mere threat of deportation and separation weighs heavily on immigrants, even those with legal status. “The ongoing anxiety is a really big deal,” she said, adding that cultural shifts can matter, as well as changes in policy. “When you have moments of really strong anti-immigrant rhetoric, the anxiety bubbles to the surface.”

Mercado put it more succinctly: “As a psychologist, I am very concerned about what's to come.”

In the meantime, Gelernt and other legal advocates are confident that the Ms. L settlement agreement, and their fight against Zero Tolerance during Trump’s first term, have prepared them for potential legal battles.

“By the time we understood that it was systematic, it had already been happening for months and months,” Gelernt said of the original wave of family separations. “This time, I think everyone's attuned to watching for it.”

L.A. County Sheriff Robert Luna confirmed Monday that ICE will play a role in World Cup security, but said he's been told federal agents won't conduct immigration enforcement.

He made the comments at a news conference on law enforcement's plans for the tournament, and said he'd been speaking directly with the head of Homeland Security in the Los Angeles area.

"There will be federal agents," Luna said. " Because it's gonna take all of us to make sure that all the venues, the scoped and unscoped events, are secure."

SoFi Stadium is set to host eight tournament matches, including the U.S. team opener against Paraguay on June 12. Los Angeles will also host a historic match three days later when Iran is set to take the field in Inglewood, making the U.S. the first host nation in World Cup history to be at war with a participating country.

Luna said the federal government had said that civil immigration enforcement would not occur at the tournament. But he made no guarantees.

" They told us that specifically would not be occurring at any of the games. Any of that's subject to change," he said. "But I have trust that they're giving me the appropriate information because if that starts occurring, we're gonna have a whole new host of problems."

In a statement to LAist, Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis wrote that Department of Homeland Security is working with federal, state, local and international partners.

“The safety and security of the American people and the millions of visitors attending these events remain our highest priority," Bis wrote in an email. "DHS will continue leveraging every available authority, technology, and partnership to protect the Homeland while ensuring the World Cup remains safe, secure, and successful for everyone involved.”

Luna is the latest official to confirm that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will play a role in the tournament. Kathryn Schloessman, who leads L.A.'s World Cup host committee, told reporters last month that ICE would be at the World Cup, and that its presence was typical at these types of major events.

ICE has two main branches: Enforcement and Removal Operations, which detains and deports people, and Homeland Security Investigations, which conducts international criminal investigations.

Todd Lyons, the former head of ICE, said at a congressional hearing earlier this year that it would be ICE’s investigatory branch, not its enforcement division, playing a key role in World Cup security.

Still, some in L.A. aren't satisfied. The World Cup is coming to Los Angeles at exactly the year mark since immigration agents ramped up arrests in the region. Masked agents in neighborhoods across the county sparked protests and widespread fear, and ICE arrests in the L.A. area last year tripled.

SoFi Stadium workers represented by Unite Here Local 11 have threatened to strike over ICE's role in the tournament. They'll vote on whether or not to authorize a strike later this week.

California air regulators on Friday approved a contentious overhaul of the state’s carbon market, creating a program that could steer billions of dollars in free pollution permits to oil refineries and other major polluters over the objections of environmental groups, key lawmakers and three of the board’s own members.

Ten members of the California Air Resources Board voted to adopt the changes to its cap-and-invest program after two days of lengthy hearings, including a full day dedicated to hundreds of public comments.

The overhaul followed intensive lobbying by the oil industry as well as pressure from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration to help keep refineries operating in the state amid rising gas prices.

The approval sets up a potential budget fight in Sacramento. The Legislative Analyst’s Office projects that quarterly auction revenue for state climate programs will drop from roughly $4 billion a year to about $2 billion under the new overhaul.

Such a shortfall would effectively zero out programs lawmakers spent last year fighting to fund: affordable housing, public transit, drinking water in low-income communities and pollution monitoring in California’s most polluted neighborhoods.

The governor’s office praised the measure as a compromise that balanced economic uncertainty with the state’s climate goals. Refinery closures and the Iran-Israel war have driven average California gas prices above $6 a gallon.

Newsom, in a statement, used the moment to draw a contrast with President Donald Trump.

“While Trump sows ongoing chaos and uncertainty, California is staying focused by protecting our economy, safeguarding public health, and doubling down on the clean energy future all Californians deserve,” he said.

Environmentalists warned the changes to the program amount to a giveaway to the fossil fuel industry that weakens California’s only program setting a firm cap on greenhouse gas emissions.

Katelyn Roedner Sutter, California senior director for the Environmental Defense Fund, called the decision “deeply misguided” for prioritizing polluters over communities.

“Newsom’s air regulators are handing billions to oil executives at the expense of our climate, health, and affordability for working families in a rushed process that has shortchanged meaningful public participation,” said Bahram Fazeli, policy director at Communities for a Better Environment.

How the program works — and what changes

California’s 13-year-old carbon market forces major polluters to buy permits while the state lowers the overall cap each year. Friday’s vote will reduce those permits – and creates a new subsidy program carved out of the market.

The program, which may still see changes, could make available a new pool of free pollution permits available to industry valued at as much as $4 billion. Companies that pledge to invest in clean energy and efficiency may qualify for the permits in exchange for investments in clean energy.

The pool will be capped at 118.3 million permits — the same number the air board has said must come off the market for California to hit its 2030 climate target. Environmentalists say the proposal risks wiping out those reductions.

Half are reserved for the fossil fuel sector. A recent Berkeley analysis, by the chair of an independent committee that oversees the carbon market, found refineries could end up with more free permits than they need to cover their emissions.

The air board has defended the design. Officials say the credits will go only to companies undertaking decarbonization projects, will be limited and temporary and can be clawed back if companies misuse them. The plan, they say, is meant to keep California refineries operating at a time of mounting closures and global market pressure. According to air regulators, the amended program will spur clean-energy investment as Trump cuts federal support.

Here's what you should know about the vote totals currently released:

Keep in mind that June 9 will be the final day for votes postmarked by June 2 to arrive at county elections offices, so the bottom line on the vote totals won't be known until then.

In L.A. County, the combined tallied votes as of Sunday add up to about 10% of registered voters.

In Orange County, the current tallies represent about 22% of registered voters.

How vote counts will be released

I thought it was an election NIGHT?

That hasn't been true in quite a while. It takes a while to get results because after the initial tallies on election night, there are still many, many votes to count and more mail-in ballots are usually arriving.

Here’s what we know so far:

L.A. County turnout

Los Angeles County has more than 5.8 million registered voters. As of Sunday, May 31:

• 580,720 ballots have been processed
• 95% voted by mail
• 5% voted in person

What's next:

• We'll know more on election night and the following days how many ballot remain to be counted.
• Has your ballot been tallied yet? You can track the status of your ballot here.

Orange County turnout

Orange County has more than 1.8 million registered voters. As of Sunday, May 31:

• 401,865 ballots have been processed
• 95% voted by mail
• 5% voted in person

What's next:

• We'll know more on election night and the following days how many ballot remain to be counted.
• Has your ballot been tallied yet? You can track the status of your ballot here.

Expected total turnout

Political Data Inc. is tracking ballot returns across California and in some high-profile races.

As of midday Monday, turnout statewide was at 16%. While Democrats outnumber Republicans statewide by almost double, Republicans have returned more ballots pre-election (21% of their voters compared to 16% for Democrats).

See the latest totals ▶

Why election day has turned into ballot-counting month

Because of the increasing use of vote-by-mail ballots, the vote count has gotten longer, according to the California Voter Foundation. In an analysis, the organization found:

• In November 2004, more than 80% of votes were counted within two days of Election Day, with 32.6% voting by mail. 
• In June 2022, about 50% of ballots were counted within two days of Election Day, with more than 90% of people voting by mail. 
• In November 2024, 66% of votes were counted within the first two days of Election Day, with 81% of the vote by mail.

A closer look at ballot counting times in California where an increasing number of vote-by-mail ballots has slowed ballot counts.

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Election officials must physically open mail-in ballots and verify signatures.

Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation, recently wrote about the ripple effect of turning in mail-in ballots by hand or in drop boxes on election day. She wrote for our partner newsroom CalMatters:

"We turn in ballots in envelopes on Election Day that take time and care to process and cannot be processed until after Election Day. Processing these ballots — which account for as much as a quarter of all ballots cast — creates a bottleneck I like to call 'the pig in the python effect'. It prevents counties from doing other tasks they need to do to certify the results."

The buzz on college campuses is that AI is disrupting the job market for young college graduates.

But new research from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York finds that the culprit may be something else: remote work.

An analysis of federal employment data, paired with a deep dive into the flexible work arrangements at one unnamed Fortune 500 tech company, reveals that companies are less likely to hire recent college grads into occupations that can be done remotely.

Researchers speculate that employers are reluctant to put such workers in a setting where it's harder to absorb lessons from coworkers.

The researchers found the unemployment rate among younger college grads — those under the age of 29 — rose 20% after the pandemic, while unemployment among older college grads fell slightly.

The study compares unemployment rates pre-pandemic, from 2017 to 2019, with unemployment rates after the pandemic, from 2022 to 2024.

Unemployment rose as remote work grew fourfold, the researchers write. "Our analysis suggests that these trends are related, with remote work making it more difficult for managers to train and mentor new employees."

Remote work leads to less feedback on the job

The research began with a look at how much feedback software engineers at a Fortune 500 tech company were getting, says Emma Harrington, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Virginia and one of the authors of the report.

"What we saw was this pretty striking pattern that software engineers got about 20% more feedback if they were sitting near their colleagues than if they were distant from them," she says, adding that that was true even before the pandemic.

But after the pandemic, feedback plummeted.

"And that really hit young workers much harder," says Harrington. "It was these people who had the most to learn that really saw this deficit in feedback."

The researchers then looked deeper into who was getting hired at the tech firm. Turns out, as the company embraced remote work, they switched away from hiring younger people.

"So they used to hire a bunch of new grads for their software engineering jobs," Harrington says. "Then they shifted really towards hiring much older people, like a decade older on average."

Later, the company pivoted again, implementing what Harrington calls a "pretty aggressive" return-to-office policy. At that point, the company resumed hiring new graduates.

"So [there was] some sense that these problems with mentorship were translating into whom this firm was deciding to hire," she says.

A look at the broader economy

The researchers then wanted to see if what was happening at that single tech company was playing out in the broader economy.

Using a widely-used index that measures how feasible it is to do a job from home, the team divided all occupations into two categories: "remotable," which included software engineering, and "non-remotable," which included mechanical engineering.

They found the gap in unemployment between recent graduates and older workers was significantly higher in "remotable" jobs than in jobs that have to be done in person.

The unemployment rate for younger grads in "remotable" jobs jumped by almost a full percentage point after the pandemic, while the unemployment rate among older grads fell marginally.

They concluded that remote work explained nearly two-thirds of the rise in unemployment among young graduates during this period.

"This relative increase in young people's unemployment coincided with the pandemic and has remained elevated since then, as have rates of remote work," the researchers write.

AI isn't disrupting so many jobs for recent college grads — yet

To see how the rise of AI chatbots may have contributed to rising unemployment among the younger set, the researchers used another index that divides occupations into those more exposed to AI, such as engineering and accounting, and those less exposed, such as teaching and nursing.

They found exposure to AI didn't explain the divergence in unemployment rates in the 2022-24 time period. Remote workflows were much more of a driving force, Harrington says, while emphasizing that this could change.

"It's always hard to make guesses about what's going to happen with generative AI," she says. "It's certainly possible that this story could really change over the next few years."

Researchers at the London School of Economics have reached a similar conclusion — that remote work is having a clearer impact on early-career hiring than AI — in a working paper examining new hires in the U.S., the U.K., Canada and Australia.

Regardless of the cause, the New York Fed report warns that a high unemployment rate among young college grads is concerning.

"Early-career experiences can have lasting consequences," the researchers write. "Research finds that individuals who began looking for jobs in slacker labor markets tend to have lower earnings and slower career progression relative to comparable peers who began their job search in better market conditions."

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