100,000 Kids May Have Parent Detained in Sweeps

A new Brookings estimate says more than 100,000 U.S. citizen children may have had a parent detained since President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign began last year, with the true number likely higher because the administration does not track family s

For parents, the nightmare often starts in a single moment.. An arrest.. A rush of decisions.. A child left without the one person they can’t replace.. More than 100,000 U.S.. citizen children may have faced that reality during immigration sweeps since President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign began last year. according to a report published Monday by Brookings. a Washington. D.C.-based think tank.. Brookings’ analysis estimates that more than 100,000 children have had a parent

detained.. It draws on prior reporting from ProPublica about detentions of parents, noting that those detentions can lead to family separations.. The contrast is stark.. During Trump’s first administration, a policy of family separation at the U.S.-Mexico border ended after widespread outrage.. Now. family breakups are happening again. and Brookings says they are occurring amid sweeps by immigration agents across the country rather than being confined to the border.. The report also points to a

bigger problem that is harder to measure than the harm itself: the federal government does not track how many separations have resulted.. Brookings said about 400,000 people have been detained by immigration agents since Trump returned to office.. But it is “nearly impossible to know” how many family separations that has caused because the administration does not track it.. Brookings said the separations are also more dispersed, more hidden, and harder to trace than in

the earlier border-era policy.. To build its estimate, Brookings used census information to approximate how many children detainees have.. It estimated that roughly 200,000 children, including 145,000 American kids, have had a parent detained.. The think tank cautioned that the actual number could be somewhat higher or lower.. ProPublica’s numbers. using a different method. paint an even sharper reminder of how quickly the system can cut through family life.. In just the first seven months

of Trump’s second term. ProPublica found at least 11. 000 American children had a parent detained. relying on government data obtained through a public information lawsuit by the University of Washington.. ProPublica also found that Trump has been deporting about four times as many mothers of American children per day as President Joe Biden did.. Both sets of figures carry the same warning: the counts are likely incomplete.. Brookings said the estimate could be off,

and ProPublica said its approach almost certainly undercounts.. The government data depends on detainees self-reporting whether they have children.. In some cases. ProPublica reported. agents may not ask. and parents may not share details about their families out of fear of what might happen to their children.. “There are a lot of families that are in the situation that are not being written down. ” Tara Watson. one of Brookings’ report authors. said.. She added

that it is “important both for transparency and from a child health and wellbeing perspective to know what’s happening to the kids. ” including how many children leave the U.S.. how many remain with close family. and how many of them do not have a clear documented status.. For some families, the process has been sudden enough to scramble the most basic caregiving plans.. Doris Flores. a mother from Honduras. was separated from her breastfeeding

infant after Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested her and her fiance at the same time.. In the rush to find someone to care for the baby and Flores’ 8-year-old daughter. she called on their local pastor to take the children in.. After Brookings’ findings were public, the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, responded with a familiar line.. DHS said the agency “does not separate families.” It said parents are asked if they

want to be removed with their children or instead to have the children placed with a person the parent designates.. DHS added that this is consistent with the practices of past administrations.. But the report points to a wrinkle inside the paperwork of enforcement.. Guidelines for ICE officers encountering parents have changed.. A document known as the Parental Interests Directive was given a new name under Trump, the Detained Parents Directive.. In the document’s preamble.

which once instructed agents to handle immigrant parents in a way that was “humane. ” the word was stripped.. Taken together, the numbers and the limits in how they are gathered help explain why the real scale remains elusive.. Brookings estimated children affected by detainees using census-based approximations. ProPublica used government data tied to a public records lawsuit. and both approaches rely on systems that do not fully capture what happens when arrests break families

apart.

Brookings immigration sweeps ICE family separation U.S. citizen children detained parents DHS Parental Interests Directive Detained Parents Directive ProPublica