ICE has detained 6,200+ kids in Trump’s second term, up 10x since Biden left office

U.S. immigration authorities have long held children in detention, but to varying degrees across administrations. President Joe Biden ended family detention in 2021 and, by the final year of his presidency, ICE was holding a daily average of 24 children in custody. But after Trump revived the policy last year, the number jumped tenfold, to 226 children incarcerated on the average day since he came back into office.

This data was obtained from ICE by the Deportation Data Project, a group of academics and lawyers who collect federal immigration data through public records requests and share it with the public.

About a month into President Trump’s second term, the number of children held by ICE each began growing to a peak of more than 550 in January of this year, then declined sharply, to fewer than 90 in mid-March. Data after that relative low point has not yet been made available. Despite the drop, lawyers for detained children told The Marshall Project conditions remain bleak, with their clients frequently suffering mental and medical distress.

Welch said she does not know why the government has shrunk the population of detained children and insisted it’s important to remember that no one knows if this is a temporary or long-term trend. “We have billions of dollars going to this apprehension apparatus, right? So, there’s really no telling what’s going to happen next,” Welch said.

In Trump’s annual budget request to Congress, released April 3, his administration requested funding for “up to 30,000 family unit beds.” Congress ultimately holds the power to enact or reject that budget, but it signals the administration’s goals for continuing family detention.

Elora Mukherjee, director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School, has represented over 70 families in detention. She said holding families for weeks, or for months, remains a national crisis, even with the recently declining numbers. “Every day I’m getting calls from families in detention saying, ‘We need help. We need help. Can you help us?’” Mukherjee said.

“No innocent child should ever be imprisoned,” said Rep. Joaquin Castro in response to The Marshall Project’s analysis of the newly released detention data. “The Trump administration’s cruel mass deportation campaign is ripping away childhoods and inflicting trauma that these young people will carry for their entire lives. It’s wrong and must end.”

In an emailed statement, an ICE spokesperson said, “being in detention is a choice” and encouraged people to take advantage of a government program that pays people money to leave the U.S. voluntarily through a process they call self-deportation. Immigration lawyers have asserted that efforts to push self-deportation are misleading.

The conditions for minors in immigration detention are dictated by the terms of a 1997 court agreement in a class action lawsuit called the Flores settlement. In a recent court filing, detainee advocates argued that the conditions at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center — a privately run facility in Dilley, Texas, where nearly half of the children detained during the Trump era have been held — are violating the terms of that settlement. “Families consistently report their children are hungry, exhausted, perpetually sick, and despondent from the conditions of confinement,” they wrote.

Parents reported finding worms and mold in food and foul-smelling water. In one court filing, a parent said, “Babies are getting thin because they can only really eat pieces of bread.”

Families at Dilley have raised more than 700 complaints over medical care with lawyers, according to court filings. In one instance, a baby received poor care before being sent to the hospital with dangerously low oxygen levels. Families have reported children in mental distress: a 2-year-old who hit himself, potty-trained children who began wetting themselves, and a 13-year-old who was put into isolation after attempting suicide.

The courts have set a 20-day limit on how long children can be detained. However, the new data shows that since Trump retook office, ICE has detained more than 1,600 children for longer than 20 days.

Medical experts, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, have said that any time in detention can cause trauma and long-term mental health risks. The longer a child is in detention, the more trauma they are likely to endure. “This is cruelty against children and reflects an executive branch that is utterly failing to abide by the rule of law in a space where children could not be more vulnerable,” Mukherjee said.

Court filings from the government paint a very different picture of family detention. They report “no evidence was ever identified indicating that residents were served food containing worms,” and only noted discolored vegetables. Court filings from the government also deny accusations of poor medical care and state that a site visit by a medical coordinator revealed no deficiencies.

A government filing asserts that, between November and February, no detainees had required “hospitalization or emergency room referral.” Even so, The Marshall Project obtained 911 calls from the Dilley facility indicating multiple transfers to the hospital. ICE did not respond to questions about those inconsistencies.

The trauma did not end for many children and their families following detention. Over 3,600 children have been deported from detention since the start of the second Trump administration. In interviews with The Marshall Project, families said they were given little or no notice about deportation, leaving them scrambling to arrange housing, work, and schooling for children. Some, who had lived in the United States for years, left behind essential medical supplies, pets, and cars. They left immigration detention, sometimes going to an unfamiliar country for the children, with little more than the clothes on their backs.

At least 1,500 children detained by ICE were released into the United States, often as their immigration cases continued to unfold. While most families were relieved to be released, they said that the process could also be difficult.

Staff at a shelter in Laredo, Texas, told The Marshall Project that families were dropped there after their detention at Dilley, sometimes thousands of miles away from their homes, with little money for travel expenses. “They are tired. They are tired. They are tired,” the Rev. Mike Smith, who runs the shelter, said in February. “You’ll see tears later, once they become aware that it’s safe.”

The number of children in detention peaked in January and declined through mid-March, which is when the data ends, and is roughly similar to ebbs and flows in adult detention, though the shifts in the population of children under 18 are more pronounced.

In recent months, the conditions of detained children have received significant attention. Lawmakers, like Rep. Joaquin Castro, have made high-profile trips to Dilley. A group of celebrities that included Mark Ruffalo and America Ferrera signed a petition to close the Dilley facility, and children’s entertainment star Ms. Rachel has spoken out on behalf of detained children.

However, if the Trump administration prevails in its current legal efforts, those conditions have the potential to deteriorate. The federal government has been fighting in court to terminate the Flores settlement, which would mean the loss of key protections, like limits on how long children can be held in detention.

In a statement, an ICE spokesperson charged that “the Flores consent decree has been a tool of the left that is antithetical to the law and wastes valuable U.S. taxpayer funded resources.”

Mukherjee said if the government no longer has to comply with Flores, it could be catastrophic for the people she represents and lead to a ballooning number of children behind bars. “Without Flores, children under this administration would likely be detained indefinitely, until their immigration proceedings end, which could take months, or more likely years, and they would be held in far worse conditions than they’re in now,” she said.

This story was produced by The Marshall Project and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.