The Obama administration then opened deportation proceedings against Mendoza-Rivera, but did not keep him in detention. There is no evidence yet that ICE has been actively looking for cases like these to identify parents to deport, according to interviews with over a dozen federal and state child welfare officials. But data on specific child welfare cases is reported from states to the federal government annually, via the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System. Medicaid data, for instance, is now reportedly being shared with the Department of Homeland Security, and those files can have more identifying information than NCANDS does on families with child welfare cases. Zaidi, the Justice Department lawyer, responded that if many state laws say that something is a crime of child neglect, then it is a crime of child neglect, and Congress said that a crime of child neglect is deportable.

Source: Washington Post February 25, 2026 01:31 UTC