Child-Family Separation and Immigration Enforcement in the United States

January 14, 2026

Child-Family Separation and Immigration Enforcement in the United States

The rapid scale up of immigration enforcement operations in the United States throughout 2025 has resulted in the termination of legal status, detention, and deportation for hundreds of thousands of immigrants. As a result, some children have been suddenly separated from their parents, left in custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, or in uncertain care arrangements in local communities. With the passage of H.R.1, and the large investment in detention and deportation infrastructure, child-family separation related to the detention and deportation of parents is likely to continue and may increase.

During this webinar, panelists discussed child and family rights in the context of immigration enforcement, the scale and scope of the child-family separation crisis, legislative oversight, and child- and family-centered responses.

View articles, government publications, and more resources related to this webinar.

This event was co-sponsored by the Collaborative on Global Children's Issues and the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University.

Participants

Kelly Albinak Kribs

Kelly Albinak Kribs is an attorney and the co-director of the Technical Assistance Program at the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights, where her work centers on addressing challenges to family unity and child well-being that arise at the intersection of immigration and state child welfare custody.

Noora Barakat

Noora Barakat is a program manager with the Unaccompanied Children Program (UCP) at the Acacia Center for Justice. UCP provides legal representation to children in and released from Office of Refugee Resettlement custody and provides legal orientations and information through a network of nearly 100 legal service providers working across the United States. Before joining UCP in 2020, Barakat represented immigrant survivors in New York City as a removal defense and family law attorney. Prior to that, she spent one year in Amman, Jordan, where she worked on gender justice issues and refugee resettlement cases.

Michelle Brané

Michelle Brané is a non-resident fellow at the Migration and Human Rights Program at Cornell Law School and the executive director of Together and Free, a nonprofit that provides support services to migrant families. She previously served as the immigration detention ombudsman and led the Family Reunification Task Force at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Prior to her government roles, Brané was the director of the Migrant Rights and Justice program at the Women’s Refugee Commission. She routinely provides expert testimony and appears frequently in the media.

Jennifer Hojaiban

Jennifer Hojaiban is a senior policy advisor with Kids in Need of Defense (KIND), where she advocates in support of the fair and appropriate treatment of unaccompanied immigrant children. She has worked to advance policies that create child-centered adjudication models for children’s cases and uphold long-standing anti-trafficking protections for children.

Martha Menendez

Martha Menendez is a human rights and immigration attorney with over a decade of experience in asylum and refugee law. She currently serves as legal manager with the legal action team at Justice in Motion, leading cross-border legal strategies to support migrants and separated families.

Jesse Rodriguez

Jesse Rodriguez serves as senior policy advisor for Congressman Dan Goldman (NY-10) in the U.S. House of Representatives, handling issues related to immigration, education, gun violence prevention, criminal justice, and prison oversight, among other topics.

Elaine Weisman

Elaine Weisman is senior development and training manager at International Social Service - USA, where she strengthens partnerships to protect children across borders. With over 15 years of international social work experience, she co-leads intercountry case management, provides technical assistance for cross-border permanency planning, and leads capacity-building and program development to improve coordination on behalf of transnational families.

Gillian Huebner

Gillian Huebner (moderator) is the co-founder and executive director of the Collaborative on Global Children's Issues at Georgetown University. A global child rights and protection specialist, much of Huebner's work focuses on child-family separation and children living outside of family care.

Children on the Move