Unlike with the more than 2,300 migrant children that the government has taken from their parents since the crackdown, American parents may not be faced with the fear that the government has lost track of their sons and daughters altogether. But experts say cleaving families apart is still damaging.

Here are a number of ways the government separates families:

Incarcerating parents

A quarter of a million American children are estimated to have a single mother in jail, where most detainees are awaiting trial or committed a minor offense, according to the most recent data from the mid-2000s. Another 150,000 had a mother in prison. Since then, the number of incarcerated women has risen. Many more children have incarcerated fathers — one in four black children can expect to have their father incarcerated before they turn 14.

Most of these children are sent to live with a family member. But children with incarcerated mothers are five times more likely to end up in foster care than those with incarcerated fathers. And as with the migrant children, some have the potential to be lost. In a 2017 investigation, The Dallas Morning News found that children whose parents were behind bars had slept in state offices, run away from foster homes and, in one case, been left to be looked after by their 12-year-old sister. In most communities, the newspaper reported, “No one in the criminal justice system is responsible for the safety of children whose mothers go to jail.”

Women who give birth while incarcerated are also usually separated from their babies. Recent years have seen the creation of a handful of prison nurseries, where female inmates can bond with their babies for an extended period of time. But much more common are policies that require a woman to part with her newborn after 24 hours or a handful of days. Most babies are turned over to a family member, but federal law says that any parent whose child spends 15 out of 22 months in foster care can permanently lose their parental rights.

Having an incarcerated parent has been linked to a host of negative outcomes in areas including behavioral and mental health, homelessness, school performance, and future interactions with the criminal justice system.