Some, freshly pressed passports in hand, end up in their parents’ country of origin — even when it’s not their own.

Others are sent to live with family or friends while an unlucky number are placed in foster care, their parents’ rights in jeopardy and reunification precarious. 

The teenagers among them are sometimes thrust into a parenting role themselves: This overnight push into adulthood can leave them managing mortgages while their peers are picking prom dresses in the first of many sacrifices, immigrant advocates told ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ. 

“A lot of these older siblings are forgoing college plans and looking for work, trying to figure out how to be mom and dad for their siblings,” said Wendy D. Cervantes, director of immigration and immigrant families for The Center for Law and Social Policy.  

An 18-year-old Texas resident was left without parents or his U.S.-born siblings more than a year ago when his entire family was stopped by federal agents as they were driving to get medical care for his seriously ill sister. All ended up being sent to Mexico. Using the pseudonym Fernando HernĂĄndez GarcĂ­a, the young man testified before a House and Senate hearing last week that he was forced to give up college in order to work full time to try and keep the family home.

There are measures in place to help families with this unwanted transition. In 2013, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement issued the , a federal guideline meant to ensure “immigration enforcement activities do not unnecessarily disrupt” parental rights. 

It allowed ICE to consider whether it needed to hold these immigrants. And if they were detained, the directive encouraged the agency to house them near their families so they could participate in child placement hearings. 

The agency was also advised to arrange transportation to and from court or otherwise allow parents or legal guardians to participate in such proceedings by phone or video.

“It required some sort of cooperation between ICE and local child welfare agencies,” Cervantes said. 

But this directive has been under attack for years. It was weakened during the first Trump administration, bolstered in the Biden era and diminished once again when Trump took office for the second time — and launched a mass deportation campaign.

found that the parents of at least 11,000 U.S. citizen children were arrested and detained in the first seven months of Trump’s second term. The news site also determined the Trump administration is per day as did the Biden administration. 

That 11,000 number will have ProPublica reported, if arrests and detentions continued at the same pace in the ensuing months.

The data obtained by ProPublica covers a period up to mid-August 2025. Some of the Trump administration’s most aggressive immigration enforcement sweeps occurred after that in targeted cities, including Chicago, Charlotte, North Carolina, and Minneapolis.  

“I do fear in the months ahead that we could see more instances where kids unnecessarily end up in the child welfare system because of the way ICE has been conducting its raids,” Cervantes said, adding its tactics have been carried out “in a way that really doesn’t give us any assurances they are abiding by their own policy to allow parents to make decisions about what happens to their kids at the time of arrest.”

Families too afraid to reach out

Added to this anxiety, the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the execution of these and other directives, is in flux. The DHS is now in the second month of a partial government shutdown as congressional Democrats push to rein in the actions of federal immigrant agents and make them more publicly accountable. 

The department is also in the midst of a leadership change: Oklahoma Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin will replace former Secretary Kristi Noem, who was

Despite concerns about his temperament — a former cage fighter, Mullin once tried to coax a union leader into a physical altercation during a Senate committee hearing — his nomination was .

It’s unclear how Mullin, a 2020 election denier, would wield his authority. But he has said he and recently defended the killing of two Minneapolis residents who protested the government’s immigration enforcement efforts, calling victim Alex Pretti “deranged.” He later said he should not have made the comment, but declined to apologize for it. 

Parents considering their family’s future in the current environment are sure to wonder what comes next as they contemplate the limited tools available to them, including , which allows people subject to immigration enforcement in some states to designate a caretaker for their kids. 

It’s a valuable lever, said Julie Babayeva, supervising attorney with the New York Legal Assistance Group: It goes into effect the moment someone is detained. But many families are reluctant to apply for it, she said. 

“We have been talking to PTAs, schools and community organizations in heavily immigrant communities,” Babayeva said. “It’s just difficult for people to trust this. They think, ‘What if I tell you my phone number and that leads to ICE coming to my house?’ People don’t understand that we’re not giving this information out to anyone, that it is confidential.”

shows 19 million children in the U.S. have at least one immigrant parent and that 1 in 6 — or 9 million school-aged children — live in a household with at least one noncitizen adult. An overwhelming majority of these kids are U.S. citizens. 

A Los Angeles teacher, who asked to remain anonymous because of her own citizenship status, recalled the case of two elementary school-aged children — and a toddler — left with their nearly 80-year-old grandmother, who had to return to work to support them after their parents were taken by ICE. 

Such disruptions inflict enormous psychological and emotional damage on children, she said. 

“They’ve heard the rhetoric of Trump saying he’s going after criminals and though they know that’s not true, they still don’t understand why their parents would be targeted,” she said. 

Roughly were deported in Trump’s first year in office and of the in ICE detention as of February, more than 73% had no criminal convictions. 

Eric Marquez, a teacher at New York City’s ELLIS Preparatory Academy, which serves older, immigrant students, said that from a classroom perspective, what stands out most is that these newcomers often present as remarkably composed. 

“They tend to put on a brave face, adapt quickly on the surface and rarely bring up in conversation the people in their lives who may have been detained or deported,” he said. “There’s often an understatedness to it.”

At the same time, teachers can sometimes see the impact indirectly, including shifts in focus, attendance and energy, he said. 

Ellis Prep’s own Dylan Contreras was among the first high school students to be detained by ICE when he was arrested after a May 2025 court appearance. Held in a Pennsylvania detention center for 10 months, he was and returned to school for the first time March 24.

Immigrant families are not the only ones puzzled and angry over the administration’s tactics. Residents in Springfield, Ohio, worried their Haitian neighbors will be deported because their Temporary Protective Status is in jeopardy, have stepped up to do something about it — in this case, house their children. 

One woman, who asked not to be identified for fear of attracting stirred up by Trump, secured emergency foster care credentials to support kids who might need somewhere safe to stay while they wait for a more permanent placement. The process took eight weeks to complete, she told ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ.

“I am ready for 0 to 18,” she said of the age of children she could take in at a moment’s notice. “I want to keep siblings together.”

A sudden rush of unhoused kids felt imminent earlier this year when Haitians’ protective status was set to expire and word spread that federal immigration agents would soon arrive in Springfield to deport them. After some 600,000 Venezuelans lost their last year, a lawyer representing the group said “hundreds and potentially thousands of Venezuelan nationals (had)

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court prohibited the Trump administration from ending Haitian deportation protections and in the case in late April. 

Separation not easily undone 

Once separated, family reunification can be difficult, notes Gabrielle Oliveira, an associate professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education who has studied immigration for years. Bureaucratic hurdles mean it can take months for a U.S. citizen child to get a passport to join their parents in a foreign country. 

Oliveira said, too, some of the children who enter foster care have family eager to shelter them but they won’t step forward because they are too afraid to interact with the government.

These new forms of family separation are among many fears undocumented immigrants face. But it’s not the worst of them, Oliveira and other advocates said: Detention is by far the most frightening prospect. 

“It’s been harder and harder to get in touch with people who are detained,” Oliveira said. “Sometimes months go by and (federal authorities) don’t even tell you where they are. So, parents are even more worried about that than the actual deportation.”

And, she said, limited communication with family makes it challenging to come to a conclusion on child care. 

“You can’t make decisions,” Oliveira said. “You can’t make phone calls. You can’t figure out what the plan is.”

Already, Cervantes said, her office has seen the fallout. 

“We’ve heard about 15- and 16-year-olds living by themselves for several weeks because their parents were detained and they had no idea where they were,” she said. “ICE was not checking to make sure they were OK. These are U.S. citizen kids.”

And there are other, practical issues that make it hard to reunite in a foreign country, Oliveira said, recalling one family trying to meet up in South America. 

“The dad got deported and the mom was here with the kids, and then she was trying to leave and go back to Brazil — but she was nervous that if she went to the airport, she would be arrested,” Oliveira said. 

When children are left with undocumented relatives, it’s nearly impossible for them to leave the United States to deliver the kids to their parents, said Shaina Simenas, co-director for the Young Center’s Technical Assistance Program.

“If you have a young child that is left with another relative who has their own immigration needs, how would you get them to the country of origin?” she said. “We’re working with a lot of families who are from Venezuela, and there are so many challenges even getting Venezuelan passports — or getting flights to Venezuela. And, of course, there is the financial toll of buying international flights and paying for passports and travel documents.”

Simenas believes poor record-keeping on the part of the government means a lack of accountability. 

“ICE doesn’t consistently and reliably identify whether adults are caregivers for children and so that alone makes it harder to track what might have happened to their children after a parent was taken,” she said. 

Many families separated during Trump’s first term have not seen justice, she noted. Nearly 1,000 children were still waiting to reunite with their parents in 2023, according to . 

“For families being separated now,” she said, “I think there are even fewer ways to track them, to be able to support and ensure they have access to reunify.”

was originally reported by Barbara Rodriguez of .

Dr. Lara Jones still remembers her visceral reaction to the image of Liam Ramos. It wasn’t the most famous one, of with ICE officers behind him. It was one from days later, of Liam while both were in custody in Texas.

“He looked pale, he looked sickly. He looked like a completely different child,” she said. “When I saw that image, my doctor brain turned on. I was like, this kid is sick. He needs medical attention.”

Jones, who is double board-certified in pediatrics and pediatric critical care medicine, can quickly assess a lot based on a child’s appearance.

“I can tell in the first 10 seconds that I look at you from the door, before I even put my hands on you, before I put a stethoscope on your chest — I can look at you, and I can know right away, you are going to be fine, or you are really sick and you need attention,” she added. “He looked very sick.”

Jones couldn’t sleep that night. Liam’s well-being consumed her while at work the next day at a California hospital. After a round of patient visits, she went into a private room and “broke down and cried.” She needed to do something.

Since then, Jones has become part of — all pediatricians, all mothers — in immigration detention out of concern for their health. They warn that the detention of these children is causing severe and lasting harm to their mental and physical health, and say that of kids allegedly facing delayed and inadequate medical care under DHS demands urgency and transparency.

“We are traumatizing children, and we are putting them in dangerous environments,” Jones said.

These doctors are in detention, to help families in need of emergency assistance and to demand accountability so that children who remain in custody receive evidence-based standards of care.

“We are mothers of young children, and we are doing all of this in between shifts, after working night shifts, during nap time,” Jones said. “We are just doing as much as we can, in the time that we have, while we are working full time and being full-time moms.”

Just weeks ago, Jones and the other women — Dr. Ashley Marie Cozzo of Connecticut and Dr. Anita K. Patel of Washington, D.C. — did not know each other personally. Now they’re in contact daily through a group text that pings at all hours of the day. They use the chat to think through advocacy ideas, to troubleshoot potential challenges and to align their priorities.

“We’re trying to figure out every day in our brainstorming, ‘What’s next? What’s next?’” said Cozzo, who is double board-certified in pediatrics and neonatal-perinatal medicine. “I love a group project, and this is such a unique situation.”

Patel, who is double board-certified in pediatrics and pediatric critical care medicine, said the quick camaraderie among the women has “reinvigorated” her after years of online campaigns around unrelated advocacy issues.

“You have three critical care doctors for kids, and there are certain qualities inherent in pediatric critical care specialists — we will not stop until we have either saved a kid or we know that there is no chance of saving them,” she said. “We all have that personality, because literally that’s what we do in our jobs.”

Liam’s story propelled their cause. As the image of Liam seemingly in a lethargic state ricocheted across the internet, the women shared their outrage with medical peers. Jones and Cozzo circulated a small online petition calling for Liam to be returned home, and amid the national outcry, . (The Ecuadorian family has an active asylum case, and it’s unclear for now whether they will be able to permanently stay in the United States.)

The doctors then connected with Patel, and the three agreed to work together to bring more awareness to other children in detention. Patel said the power of imagery catapulted Liam’s story.

“If he was an older kid, or even if he was Liam without the bunny hat — the outcry may not have come,” Patel said. “And all I could think was Liam deserved that outcry, and every single kid in detention needs that outcry.”

The trio has fixated on the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, the facility near San Antonio that houses families, in part because they are in frequent communication with a journalist, Lidia Terrazas, on people impacted by detention.

When Terrazas highlighted in early February the story of a 2-month-old baby named Juan Nicolás, the case crystallized the doctors’ urgency. The boy had been in respiratory distress while at Dilley, but had allegedly received delayed care as his condition worsened. He was sent by ambulance to a hospital on February 16, according to Patel, after an unresponsive episode where detention officials could not wake him. DHS later deported the baby, his mother and other family members, including a 16-month-old, to Mexico.

Jones was able to connect by text with Mireya López Sánchez, Juan Nicolás’ mother. The postpartum mother said that her milk had dried up while at Dilley. Patel is still nursing her toddler; the parallels — the universal urge a mother has to feed her baby — linger for her.

When Patel nurses her own child, “I think of Mireya, whose milk dried up because she was so stressed and nutritionally deficient that she couldn’t breastfeed, and then when she couldn’t breastfeed, then she couldn’t afford clean water that wasn’t brown or smelled like chlorine to make formula.”

, which has partnered with the doctors to raise money for commissary funds, detainees at Dilley have to spend $40 to buy a four-pack of large water bottles and $35 for a 12-pack of small water bottles.

A spokesperson for DHS did not respond to a request for comment from The 19th, but the agency of malnourished or mistreated children and claims people in detention have access to medical care and adequate food. Emergency crews were called to the facility at least 11 times since September for children with symptoms including bronchitis, respiratory distress and fever, .

CoreCivic, a private company that runs the Dilley facility, deferred questions to DHS but that claims of inadequate medical care are inaccurate and “directly contradicted by the comprehensive, around-the-clock care delivered by our licensed physicians, dentists, advanced practice providers, nurses and mental health professionals.”

Jones doesn’t buy that when it comes to Juan Nicolás, whose mother reportedly told officials that her newborn was having difficulty breathing and was vomiting. Mireya said that instead of being seen by a medical professional, guards at the facility monitored the newborn for two days before he was sent to the hospital in distress.

“I don’t know what they were assessing, but they’re not assessing it through the lens of a pediatric expert,” Jones said. “They’re not doing the appropriate medical workup. So that case alone is proof of delayed care and denied appropriate care, because the appropriate care for a 2-month-old with difficulty breathing and vomiting is to go to the emergency department.”

Cozzo noted that several children died in 2018 and 2019 while in immigration , or . In 2023, — reportedly after her mother repeatedly sought medical care for her.

“We have a precedent of the highest degree of loss: children’s lives,” Cozzo said. “It has happened before, the things that these women are worried about — it’s only going to be a matter of time before we don’t learn from the mistakes of the past and another child dies.”

As the doctors circulated Juan Nicolás’ story online, they connected to help . They also helped secure a hotel room for Juan Nicolás’s family amid their deportation to Mexico. They are now raising money . As they hear of specific cases, including those of and , they try to spring into action by either raising public awareness or funds.

The medical community has long expressed alarm about how children’s health can deteriorate in immigration detention. concluded that children’s mental health suffers and there’s a cascade of ripple effects, including anxiety disorders, depression and developmental regression and delays. The issue has been examined , with similar outcomes.

There are also standards of care for immigrant children in detention, and states that children should not be detained for more than 20 days. But that some children are being held in detention for much longer — weeks or months. The publication estimated at the time that at least 3,800 children under 18 had been booked into ICE since President Donald Trump, who campaigned on mass deportation, returned to office. More than 1,300 children were held last year for longer than 20 days.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has its call for limited exposure of children in DHS facilities. Dr. Sural Shah is chair of AAP’s Council on Immigrant Child and Family Health. She said the council, which was very responsive during the first Trump administration’s family separation policy, has been accelerating its work in recent months.

“We’re always active, always sharing information. But the era that we’re in now — it’s been a heightened sense of need, of urgency, of hey, this is happening, and we need to do something about it,” she said. “We need to figure out how to band together, how to lift up voices, how to gather health care professionals and folks that care about children’s health to stop these practices because they’re so harmful to children.”

Shah added that she’s not surprised that pediatricians are leading organic advocacy efforts.

“It is something that is deeply woven into the fabric of who pediatricians are,” she said. “We have a deep understanding of the range of factors that affect children and their families.”

Over the past few weeks, the trio of doctors began drafting and circulating a letter, which was later signed by thousands of medical professionals, to be sent to DHS officials and several key senators with roles in immigration enforcement oversight. , dated February 26, alleges unsanitary detention conditions and inadequate access to food and clean water. It also expresses concerns of a measles outbreak within the Dilley facility. Infants are typically too young to be vaccinated against measles.

Kristi Noem’s ouster as head of DHS last Wednesday doesn’t alter the demand for accountability, said Cozzo.

“I actually don’t necessarily think that changing the face changes anything, because it’s just a complete system that is broken,” she said.

All three agreed that the letter is a start.

“This letter is day one of a marathon,” said Patel, who was a guest of Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro at the recent State of the Union address, with the goal of elevating the issue. “The point of the letter was to clearly and succinctly as possible, dictate what has been documented as known medical negligence or medical harm or human rights violations.”

They want to grow public pressure while helping as many children and their families as possible. Jones said their advocacy is about the health and well-being of children. She doesn’t see that as political.

“This is an issue about child welfare,” she said. “I feel like if we can continue to stand our ground about the fact that we are causing preventable, measurable, well-studied, predictable harm to children that is not justified. There’s no context in which that is justified, and so I think we just have to continue to get that message across — to the public, to lawmakers. There will be challenges at every step of the way, no doubt, but I think the truth and what’s right is on our side.”

Led by U.S. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Dan Goldman and Adriano Espaillat, they expressed “profound concern” to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and Education Secretary Linda McMahon “about the pattern of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) targeting K-12 public school students throughout the country.”

They cited the cases of five young New Yorkers — including a 6-year-old Ecuadorian girl who was in August while her brother, , remained in adult Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention. Two other siblings, one a K-12 student, were left in New York without their mother.

“ICE’s targeting of not only adults without criminal convictions, but also children and families, negates the administration’s stated policy of going after the ‘worst of the worst’ for deportation proceedings,” they note in signed by eight other New York Democratic U.S. representatives, including Ritchie Torres and Jerrold Nadler.

They demanded to know the total number of students — from kindergarten to college-age — arrested by the Department of Homeland Security since President Donald Trump took office in January. They want to learn how many remain in ICE custody, their average length of stay and what percentage were or are being held alongside their families. 

They further asked how the U.S. government is meeting its legal obligation to educate these children and, more specifically, about the quality and language proficiency of the teaching staff. 

“The Department of Education has the responsibility under the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution to ensure that all students have equal access to education,” they wrote. “Please provide copies of curricula, sample lesson plans, and rubrics currently in use at ICE detention facilities, processing sites, and Office of Refugee Resettlement shelters.”

An Education Department spokeswoman said Monday that it will respond to the letter when the government reopens. In a statement to ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ, DHS did not answer any questions about the school-age children detained by its agents, but blamed the media for “attempting to create a climate of fear and smear law enforcement.”

Ocasio-Cortez and Espaillat did not respond to ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ’s requests for comment. A spokesperson for Goldman, whose district encompasses Lower Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn, said he “remains extremely committed to holding ICE accountable for terrorizing our schools and communities.”  

The U.S. representatives’ worry about the fate of immigrant children echoes concerns being voiced nationally. Advocates say their communities are living in are targeted near school grounds, particularly in and where ICE tactics have been aggressive. 

Alarm over agents’ actions and their apparent lack of accountability was a central theme of the more than 2,700 attended by millions across the country this past weekend. 

Ranking Democratic members of two congressional subcommittees said Monday against ICE agents, citing that more than 170 U.S. citizens have been held — including nearly 20 children. 

“There’s no boundaries in this dragnet,” Rebecca Brown, a supervising attorney with Public Counsel’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, told ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ . “Now there’s no ‘off limits.’ Everything is fair game.”

Not only are children and their parents being swept up near school grounds, Brown said the current federal government shutdown is making it increasingly difficult for families — and attorneys — to locate anyone who’s been detained.

“With this administration and with this budget shutdown, it is really hard to get folks on the phone,” she said.

Immigrant advocacy organizations are urging parents to make guardianship plans, including those specific to their child’s schooling. One such group, in response to the massive uptick in enforcement efforts, said for the first time it’s helped some 100 families this year make binding educational plans for their kids in case their parents or guardians are arrested or deported.

“We have not used this in prior years,” said Julie Babayeva, supervising attorney at the New York Legal Assistance Group’s LegalHealth Unit. “We are doing this much more now. This is becoming super urgent.”

More than were in government detention in late September, according to a clearinghouse that tracks federal data. More than 71% had no criminal convictions. More than unaccompanied minors were in government custody as of Oct. 20, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. The Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is under HHS, oversees their care at some and programs in 24 states and is charged with detainees’ schooling. ORR did not respond to requests for comment.

Undocumented immigrants over 18 are sent to adult holding sites. Dylan Lopez Contreras, 20 and a student at a New York City high school dedicated to older newcomers, is among them. The Bronx resident was arrested in May in a high-profile case and remains in detention as his lawyers denying him asylum and deporting him back to Venezuela.

Contreras’s case was also cited in the letter to Noem and McMahon, with the representatives noting he is being held hundreds of miles away from his family in Pennsylvania at the “Moshannon Valley Processing Center, from which there have been reports of insufficient medical care and use of solitary confinement.”

Conditions at both and have been widely criticized. In addition to concerns about young people’s overall health and safety, at these sites: substandard curriculum and untrained or underqualified staff are among many complaints. 

Just last week, immigrant from Everett, Massachusetts, was arrested after authorities fielded a “credible tip” in which the student was said to have made “a violent threat against another boy within our public school.” 

His mother, who arrived at the local police station to pick him up, was instead told ICE had already taken him away. The family, from Brazil, has a pending asylum claim. The mother from two different immigration facilities, one in Massachusetts and the other in Virginia. 

“He cried a lot because he had never been away from home or his family,” she said. “He was desperate, saying ICE had taken him.”

Erika Richmond-Walton, a litigation fellow at Boston-based Lawyers for Civil Rights, said the detention and deportation of young kids “is definitely not protecting or advancing their educational rights. Deporting children contradicts decades of settled law.” 

And even if the children themselves are not targeted, the removal of their parents is devastating. One California mother is bereft after her husband was detained in late September after dropping off their 8-year-old daughter at school. 

The woman, who asked not to be identified for fear of immigration enforcement, told ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ she talks with her husband every day through video chat and that she expects him to be deported to their country of origin. She said government officials told her husband they are “waiting for the plane to fill up so they can send it to Colombia.” 

, said the well-documented damage to school-age children of aggressive deportation extends far beyond increased absenteeism, anxiety and plummeting grades. In a just society, he said, young people learn political norms through what they see.

“When a child watches a federal agent drag a parent from a car line or hauls someone off in front of classmates, they absorb a lived lesson: Power may be exercised arbitrarily, and some lives can be violated in public without accountability,” he said. 

Adaku Onyeka-Crawford, director of the Opportunity To Learn Program and a senior attorney at The Advancement Project, located in Washington, D.C., said immigrants at schools is dubious.  

“I think this administration is tricky when it’s saying we are not sending ICE to schools but are sending ICE after students who are on their way to school — and targeting communities and children no matter where they are or what their age.”

Prior administrations took such circumstances into account, at least to an extent, said Brown of the Public Counsel’s Immigrants’ Rights Project. But early on in his second term, Trump rescinded a longstanding restriction against immigration agents carrying out enforcement actions in so-called sensitive locations, including schools.

“There was some consideration for age and vulnerability,” she said. “We’ve seen an uptick in enforcement around schools. … This is by design: You punish the kids in order to get the parents to comply.”