The New Year was just hours old when the administration of President Barack Obama began rounding up and deporting at least 121 people, some reportedly as young as four years old, presumably back to the drug wars and violence they are fleeing in predominantly Central American countries.

The coordinated raids over the weekend focused mostly in Georgia, Texas, and North Carolina, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced Monday, and constituted the first wave of mass deportations that could impact up to 15,000 people. The plan was revealed just before the Christmas holiday, which many criticized as particularly inhumane timing.

According to the advocacy organization #Not1More Deportation, in the Atlanta area starting on Saturday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents “barged into homes, even when asked for warrants at the door, removing mothers and children as young as 4 years old.”

“They took away children so young they would’ve needed car seats in their vehicles for them,” said Adelina Nicholls, executive director of the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights, in a statement released on Sunday. “The fear this causes isn’t contained to ICE. It spreads to fear of the police, of local government, especially as ICE tries to get its reach back into local institutions.”

The Los Angeles Times reports that at least 11 families have been taken into custody so far in 2016. DHS says that families are being sent to what are euphemistically referred to as “ICE family residential centers” before being forced to board flights out of the United States.

Most of those targeted in the raids hail from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador—where U.S. policies such as the Central American Free Trade Agreement and American-backed coup in Honduras have worsened the related crises of poverty and violence.