A Breastfeeding Mother Is Suing the Trump Administration to Be Reunited With Her Infant Daughter 

A nursing mother who fled death threats from her brother-in-law in El Salvador is suing the Trump administration to reunite her with her 11-month old daughter, who was still being breastfed when they were forcibly separated.

Leydi Duenas-Claros, who was denied asylum in July, is currently facing deportation and is among the hundreds of migrant families that remain separated despite multiple court deadlines mandating reunification.

Duenas-Claros “has suffered, and continues to suffer, extreme anguish and trauma due to the forcible separation from her infant child—a baby so young that she was breastfeeding prior to the separation,” the lawsuit reads. Duenas-Claros is also appealing her asylum rejection and seeking to halt deportation proceedings.

HuffPost reports that, according to the most recent updates from the Trump administration, only seven children have been reunited with their parents in the past two weeks and 565 children remain separated from their families. Two dozen of those children are under the age of 5.

As was announced in early August, the Trump administration believes the American Civil Liberties Union and other nonprofits should be responsible for finding parents waiting to be reunited with their children. On August 9, the administration clarified that they do not want to reunite children with their parents in the U.S.; instead, they are seeking to deport them as a means of “reunification.”

Duenas-Claros was scheduled to be deported on Thursday—without her daughter—but the proceedings have been postponed in light of her lawsuit.