Over 145,000 US children separated from parents since Trump’s ICE surge, study estimates | US immigration
More than 145,000 US children have had a parent detained by immigration authorities since the beginning of Donald Trump’s second presidency, according to a new report published by a prominent US think tank.
ReportThe report, released Monday by the Brookings Institution, estimated that the parents of approximately 146,635 children who were US citizens were detained during the mass deportation campaign launched by the Trump administration after it took office in early January. The study also found that more than 22,000 of these children had custody of all of their co-resident parents.
About 36 percent were under six years old; this underscored a harsh immigration enforcement strategy that drew widespread criticism from civil rights and immigrant advocacy groups.
The Brookings Institution report also found that the largest share of U.S. citizen children with parents in detention was Mexico-related, at nearly 54%, while children with parents from Guatemala and Honduras together accounted for more than 25%.
Washington D.C. and Texas have the highest shares of American children with an affected parent, with more than five in every 1,000 facing parental immigration detention, according to the report.
Brookings researchers noted that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reported 18,277 detainees with U.S. citizen children in fiscal year 2025, but that figure was “almost certainly a significant undercount.”
Earlier in May, a Guardian investigation found that the detention of nearly 18,400 parents had affected up to 32,000 children in the first seven months of 2025 alone. This figure included at least 12,000 U.S. citizen children.
The investigation also found that the Trump administration arrested nearly 2,300 parents and deported nearly 1,400 parents each month in 2025; That’s nearly double the monthly deportation rate recorded in 2024 during the end of Joe Biden’s presidency.
Brookings researchers noted anecdotal evidence suggesting that many immigrants are either not asked if they have children or choose not to disclose this information out of fear. Instead, they relied on demographic data from the Detention Data Project, which matches detainees’ characteristics (including country or region of origin and marital status) with similar undocumented individuals identified in the American Community Survey (ACS), a nationally representative household survey.
About 13 million adults in the United States undocumented or have only limited legal protections. As a result, more than 4.6 million U.S. citizen children are at risk of deportation with at least one parent, and nearly 2.5 million may face the detention of all parents in their home.
“For both logistical and political reasons, the administration will not be able to achieve its stated goal of removing every unauthorized immigrant from the United States,” the researchers said. “At a minimum, DHS must collect and publicly report accurate data on the number of parents at risk of detention or deportation, as well as the number of U.S. citizen children who leave the country following their parents’ removal.”
As the study adds: “As immigration enforcement expands, ensuring that affected children have access to basic support and protection must be understood not as optional but as a necessary government responsibility tied to the foreseeable consequences of family separation and displacement.”
In a statement to the Guardian, a DHS spokesperson argued that “being in custody is a choice.”
“ICE does not separate families,” the spokesperson said. “Parents are asked if they would like to be removed with their children, or ICE will place the children in a safe person designated by the parent. This is consistent with the past administration’s immigration enforcement.”
The spokesperson added that, among other things, with the CBP Home app, “parents can take control of their departure from the United States and reserve the chance to return through the correct legal pathway.”
In March, a report by the Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC) and Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) found that the Trump administration deported many immigrant parents without asking if they had children or allowing them to decide whether their children would accompany them.
