A masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer walks back to his vehicle after a random stop January 9 in Minneapolis, Min. A new report says that over 100,000 U.S.-born children so far may have been separated from a parent during the second Trump administration. File Photo by Craig Lassig/UPI | License Photo
The Trump administration’s push to detain and deport immigrants has likely separated more than 200,000 children from at least one parent, a new report from the Brookings Institution said Monday.
About three-quarters of those children — about 145,000 — are likely U.S. citizens, the report said. This is significantly more than the number that could be expected based on data from the officials U.S. Department of Homeland Security, The New York Times reported. The researchers say the official statistics are likely an undercount.
The Brookings Institution said it used detainee demographics matched with information from the American Community Survey, a national household survey. It said that while about 400,000 immigrants have been detained between Jan. 20, 2025, and April 9, 2025, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel are supposed to ask if those it detains are parents, anecdotal evidence suggests that this question often is not asked or that those detained avoid mentioning their children to protect them.
“Any way you cut it, there are tens of thousands of children who have experienced parental detention since this president entered office,” Tara Watson, a senior fellow at Brookings, said in The New York Times. “The majority are U.S. citizens.”
Watson and report co-author Maria Cancian also created an online tool that estimates the likely number of children affected by parental detention in differing scenarios. The estimates under that tool range from 117,400 to 175,000 children who are U.S. citizens, but the authors said they consider the true number to be about 145,000.
The authors said little is known about what happens to U.S.-born children with a parent or parents in detention. They estimate about 22,000 children are left without any parent in the home. They interviewed personnel with child welfare agencies and estimated that a small fraction of these children are in official foster care. Some are cared for by older siblings or community members.
“Most children stay with friends and family who don’t have a legal obligation to care for these children,” Cancian said.
Further breakdowns of statistics in the report show that 36.5% of affected U.S.-born children are under 6 years old, while 36.1% are ages 6 to 12 and 27.4% are ages 12 to 17.
In conclusion, “As immigration enforcement expands, ensuring that affected children have access to basic supports and protections should be understood not as optional, but as a necessary governmental responsibility tied to the foreseeable consequences of family separation and displacement,” the report says. “When we detain or deport a child’s parents, the nation has a clear obligation to recognize, account for, and safeguard the children’s well-being.”
