Tag
Incidents affecting children's rights, including family separation, detention of minors, denial of education or healthcare, and failure to treat the best interests of the child as a primary consideration.
16 incidents
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
SNAP enrollment dropped by about 5 million people -- roughly 13% nationally -- in the year after the 2025 budget law expanded work requirements and shifted costs to states, a decline analysts say outpaced CBO's projection while food banks reported surging demand.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
A strike on the night of September 1 hit a wedding near the Strait of Hormuz, killing at least four people including a 4-year-old and wounding dozens. Reuters-consulted experts judged the weapon likely American; the US has neither confirmed nor denied responsibility and says it is investigating.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
ICE held children at its Dilley family detention center for months, far beyond the Flores settlement's 20-day standard, with an estimated 1,560 minors held past the limit in six months. A federal judge appointed an independent monitor and special master over ICE and CBP child custody. DHS responded that 'being in detention is a choice.'
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
CMS finalized a rule cutting off federal Medicaid and CHIP funding for gender-affirming medical care for low-income transgender minors, while allowing the same drugs and procedures for non-transgender patients. A coalition of 20 states, D.C. and Pennsylvania's governor sued to block it.
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
Israel's 2026 Lebanon offensive — including white phosphorus munitions used over civilian areas — has killed over 1,000 people, wounded nearly 3,000, and displaced 700,000. Continued US arms transfers despite documented violations raise state-responsibility concerns under Common Article 1; individual criminal complicity has not been established, because no US-supplied item has been linked to a documented 2026 unlawful strike. HRW and UN experts have called for suspension of military assistance.
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
Precision Strike Missiles, which burst above their target and scatter about 180,000 tungsten pellets, hit a sports hall, a school and homes in Lamerd on 28 February 2026, killing at least 21 civilians. A UN fact-finding mission found reasonable grounds that the US was responsible and that the strike was an indiscriminate attack amounting to a war crime under customary law, applying a recklessness standard. The US denies responsibility.
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
A Tomahawk cruise missile struck a primary school in Minab, Iran, killing at least 156 people, including 120 to 123 children, in one of the deadliest single incidents of civilian harm in the 2026 Iran war. Media investigations, a preliminary US military inquiry as reported, and the UN fact-finding mission (A/HRC/63/61) attribute the strike to the US.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
The administration attempted a mass deportation of unaccompanied minor children in the middle of the night during a holiday weekend, circumventing legal protections that require children to appear before an immigration judge. A federal judge halted the operation after being awakened at 2:35 AM, but one plane had already taken off before turning around.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
The DHS Inspector General's July 2, 2019 management alert documented conditions at Border Patrol facilities in the Rio Grande Valley: some single adults held for over a month in overcrowded cells, standing room only conditions, limited access to showers and clean clothing, insufficient food, and inadequate medical care. The Clint facility conditions, documented by attorneys visiting to conduct interviews, included children sleeping on floors, a 2-year-old with dirty clothes, limited access to soap and toothbrushes, and sick children not separated from healthy ones. The administration's response was that the facilities were overwhelmed by a surge in arrivals and that Congress needed to provide additional funding.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
The CBP Border Patrol stations along the southern border were designed for 72-hour holding. Under the Trump administration's enforcement surge, they held children for days and weeks, sometimes in chainlink-fenced areas — the 'cages' — without adequate food, water, sleep, or sanitation. At least six children died in or shortly after U.S. immigration custody between September 2018 and May 2019, after roughly a decade without a child death in CBP custody. The DHS OIG described overcrowding presenting an immediate risk to detainee health and safety.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
The first Trump administration made tens of thousands of asylum seekers wait in Mexican border cities, among the most violent in the region, for US hearings they mostly faced without lawyers. HRW documented kidnappings and assaults and found the programme violated non-refoulement; a federal appeals court found it likely unlawful, but the Supreme Court let it continue.
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
A federal judge in the ACLU's Ms. L. v. ICE case ordered the government to reunify separated children under five within 14 days and all others within 30 days. The administration missed the deadlines and admitted it lacked a tracking system. Parents were deported without their children; children were 'lost' in the system; in some cases children remained in U.S. custody for years after their parents had been removed to their home countries. The ACLU's family tracking project located hundreds of deported parents who didn't know where their children were.
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
While the Zero Tolerance policy is documented elsewhere, the specific treatment of children under 5 — the 'tender age' population — constituted a distinct category of harm. Infants as young as a few months old were taken from parents and placed in facilities where they were cared for by strangers. Whistleblowers described children crying inconsolably. The American Academy of Pediatrics called the policy 'child abuse.' A federal court gave the government 14 days to reunify this group; the administration missed the deadline.
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
Attorney General Sessions announced a zero tolerance policy in April 2018 requiring criminal prosecution of all illegal border crossers. Because federal criminal custody excludes children, this automatically separated minors from their parents. Over 5,500 children were separated in six weeks. Courts ordered reunification; a June 2022 federal task-force report found about 1,400 children still not reunified.
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
Zero tolerance created systematic family separation as deliberate policy — not incidentally but intentionally, with separation designed as a deterrent. The administration did not build a system to track which children belonged to which parents. A federal judge ordered reunification within 30 days; the government said it could not comply. In October 2020, ACLU lawyers reported they still could not reach the parents of 545 children — many of whom had been deported to Central America without their children, without being told where their children were.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
Four months after the deadly Yakla raid, US special forces raided another Yemeni village. The Pentagon reported seven al-Qaeda fighters killed and no civilian casualties; villagers said five civilians were killed, including a teenager shot while running away and an elderly man who mistook the soldiers for visitors.