Yuyun Lusiyani
A harrowing midnight scene unfolded in Lakeland, Florida, when Doris Flores, amidst frantic hours before her immigration detention, imparted urgent instructions to her pastor and his wife on how to care for her 4-month-old daughter, Briany. As squad cars idled outside the family’s trailer home, Flores, her milk supply dried by panic, detailed feeding schedules, formula preparation with distilled water, vaccination due dates, and diaper sizes for the plump-cheeked infant. This deeply personal ordeal encapsulates a stark national trend revealed by a new nationwide Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) dataset: the number of immigrant parents of American citizen children arrested and detained has surged dramatically under the Trump administration, with deportations of mothers experiencing a particularly sharp increase.
An exclusive analysis of this comprehensive ICE dataset by ProPublica reveals that in the first seven months of President Donald Trump’s second term, authorities arrested and detained parents of at least 11,000 U.S. citizen children. If this relentless pace continues, the figure is projected to roughly double by now, averaging more than 50 American citizen children per day witnessing a parent pulled into detention. This represents a twofold increase in such incidents compared to the preceding Biden administration, marking a significant shift in immigration enforcement priorities and their profound impact on mixed-status families across the United States.
Escalating Enforcement: A Statistical Overview
The data, obtained by the University of Washington Center for Human Rights through an ongoing public records lawsuit, covers immigration enforcement activities from late 2021 through mid-August 2025. It paints a vivid picture of the diverging approaches to immigration policy between the two administrations. Under Trump, not only have arrests of immigrant parents of U.S.-born children surged, but the consequences for those arrested have also become more severe, particularly for mothers.
The ProPublica analysis underscores that the Trump administration is deporting approximately four times as many mothers of U.S. citizen children per day compared to the Biden administration. While an increase in arrests contributes to this surge, it doesn’t fully account for the dramatic rise in deportations. A critical difference lies in the outcome post-arrest: under Biden, about 30% of such arrests resulted in deportation, allowing a significant number of parents to return home to their families. In stark contrast, under Trump, nearly 60% of these arrests have led to deportation, indicating a much lower rate of release back into the community.
Furthermore, the demographic of those targeted for detention has broadened. The current administration is detaining a higher proportion of parents with only minor criminal histories or no criminal convictions at all, excluding traffic or immigration-related offenses. Over half of the detained fathers and approximately three-quarters of the mothers of American citizen children under Trump had no criminal record beyond minor infractions, signaling a departure from previous policies that often prioritized enforcement against individuals with serious criminal offenses.
Policy Shifts and Discretionary Changes
Current and former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials acknowledge that these family separations, while deeply impactful, may not technically violate official policy. Instead, they point to significant alterations in the guidelines governing how officers exercise discretion. A key policy document, once known as the "Parental Interests Directive" under President Barack Obama, has been rebranded by the Trump administration as the "Detained Parents Directive." A notable revision is the removal of the word "humane" from its preamble, which previously instructed agents to handle immigrant parents in a way that was "humane" to avoid "unnecessarily undermining their parental rights."
John Sandweg, who directed ICE during the initial adoption of the directive under Obama, recalled a different operational philosophy. "Back then, we were operating from a lens that family unity is everything," he stated. Tom Homan, then a high-ranking ICE official and now a prominent figure in Trump’s immigration strategy, had introduced the original directive to field offices across the country, emphasizing enforcement without "unnecessarily undermining their parental rights," according to his August 2013 talking points.
However, Sandweg and other former officials contend that the second Trump administration has prioritized aggressive enforcement targets, such as arresting 3,000 immigrants daily, over concerns regarding the potential harm of separating children from their parents. The July revision to the directive further reinforces this shift, explicitly stating that it "in no way limits the ability of ICE personnel to make enforcement decisions on a case-by-case basis." This clause, according to Andrew Lorenzen-Strait, a former ICE official who oversaw the directive’s implementation, has effectively diminished instances where parents are spared detention or deportation. "It may happen on a case-by-case basis because an officer in and of himself has humanity," he observed, implying that such considerations are now largely dependent on individual officers rather than systemic policy.
Official Responses and Justifications
ProPublica submitted detailed inquiries about its findings to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE. In an emailed statement, DHS Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis stated that the agency "cannot verify the veracity of the data" analyzed by ProPublica. However, ProPublica independently validated the data, which was obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, and its analytical approach with external experts.
Bis further asserted, "ICE does not separate families." She clarified that immigrant parents retain the choice to either leave the country with their children or designate someone to care for them, a practice she described as "consistent with past administration’s policies." Regarding the revised directive, Bis maintained that it "simply standardizes the required forms," adding that "under President Trump, ICE will not ignore the rule of law."
Echoing this stance, a White House spokesperson issued a statement emphasizing that individuals residing in the country illegally "who wish to avoid the deportation process should self-deport." Local law enforcement agencies, such as the Polk County Sheriff’s Office, also defended their role. A spokesperson for Sheriff Grady Judd, who has recently advocated for a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants with community ties and no criminal record, stated that deputies do not make detention decisions but rather report suspects to ICE, which then makes the final determination. The office also noted a new procedural change: "Nothing has changed in how we deliver day-to-day law enforcement services in our community," the spokesperson wrote, "other than asking everyone with whom we interact their place of birth."
The Human Cost: Stories of Separation and Struggle
The statistical trends are underpinned by countless personal tragedies, illustrating the diverse and often devastating outcomes for children and families.
Fernanda, a restaurant worker in Florida who requested identification only by her middle name due to her immigration status, faced an agonizing choice. After her children’s father was arrested and deported, she made the heart-wrenching decision to send their toddler son and 4-year-old daughter, both U.S. citizens, to live with him in Guatemala. Fearing her own imminent arrest and deportation, she wanted to prevent her children from being left stranded. With the help of the Guatemalan-Maya Center, a nonprofit organization, she escorted her children, the boy in a Spider-Man outfit and the girl in a CoComelon sweatshirt, to the Fort Lauderdale airport in early February, putting them on a plane to an uncertain future.
Griselda, a single mother from Honduras and a survivor of domestic abuse, recounted being detained in Dilley, Texas, for four months, separated from her young daughters in Florida. She had been on her way to a house painting job in Melbourne, Florida, when the car she was in crashed. Police officers responded, then contacted ICE. Despite informing officers and ICE about her children – a 4-year-old born in Mexico during her journey to the U.S. border and a 1-year-old U.S. citizen – she was sent out of state. Desperate for reunification, Griselda opted not to appeal her denied asylum claim. An ICE agent and a social worker retrieved her daughters from Florida, and the family was escorted to the border, where they crossed on foot into Mexico, a country where they had no ties or resources. A DHS spokesperson confirmed the family’s joint return to Mexico.
In Seattle, Mauricio Ayala, a 24-year-old engineer, experienced a sudden role reversal after his father, a roofer, was arrested in one of the first large-scale workplace raids of the new Trump administration last April. Ayala nervously called 911, reporting "masked men in unmarked vehicles" detaining his father. (DHS clarified that officers verbally identify themselves and wear agency badges and vests.) His mother had been forced to leave the country over a decade prior, but his father, despite a 2015 reckless driving conviction, had not been arrested at that time due to the presence of young children. Now, as Ayala and his college-age sister entered adulthood, their father was slated for deportation. To support his parents in Mexico and cut costs, Ayala moved from his Seattle apartment back to his father’s trailer 90 minutes away, joined by his sister, while their high school senior brother took on part-time jobs.
Maria Magdalena Callejas, her boyfriend, and her 14-year-old son were detained in Texas during a road trip last spring. She called a friend in California who had been watching her two younger U.S. citizen children, begging her to extend their care. Her boyfriend was deported. Callejas and her older son, Edwin, were held in family detention, where Edwin reportedly suffered stress and weight loss due to the prison-like conditions. Overwhelmed by her son’s despondency, Callejas felt compelled to agree to return to El Salvador, a country Edwin had left at age five. (ICE maintains that its facilities provide safe conditions and proper medical care.) Callejas understood that her 6-year-old and 4-year-old would join them, but the children’s father, who had a restraining order against him for domestic battery (though attorneys for both parents stated Callejas allowed him time with the kids), opposed their departure. Since Callejas’ deportation, a monthslong custody battle has ensued in a Los Angeles court, with Callejas attending hearings virtually from El Salvador, while her younger children remain with a caretaker.
The Flores Family’s Journey to San José, Honduras
Following the initial frantic night in Lakeland, Rev. Israel Vázquez and his wife, Rev. Raysa Vázquez, dedicated themselves to caring for Briany and her 8-year-old half-sister, Briana. Raysa meticulously tended to Briany, waking every few hours to feed and comfort her. Briana, a quiet and humble child who preferred English, remained at her elementary school to maintain stability, necessitating a 45-minute daily round trip for the pastors.
Meanwhile, Doris Flores and Egdulio Velasquez were shuttled between detention facilities. Flores recounted suffering painful swelling and a week-long fever, which she attributed to mastitis brought on by her inability to nurse Briany due to the stress and separation.
The pastors, committed to the girls’ well-being, recognized the need to secure Briany’s passport if reunification with her parents in Honduras became necessary. This required obtaining signatures from both Flores and Velasquez while they were in detention. A breakthrough came when an ICE deportation officer contacted Israel Vázquez, informing him that Flores’ removal was imminent and offering assistance in getting the necessary signatures.
The following day, the girls were allowed a brief, emotional reunion with Flores at a government office in Tampa, where she provided her signature. Flores wept openly at the sight of her children. Volunteers in Mississippi then secured Velasquez’s signature at his detention center. Days later, the Vázquez couple drove Briany to Miami to pick up her emergency infant passport.
The final farewell occurred at the Tampa airport. Flores, visibly exhausted, met them at the terminal. Israel handed over the diaper bag and bottles. While Velasquez would be deported weeks later on a separate flight to Honduras, and Flores’ eldest son from a previous relationship remained in the U.S., it was Flores and her two daughters who embarked on the flight. They shared a poignant final photo before parting ways.
Today, the Flores-Velasquez family resides in Velasquez’s father’s home in San José, a rural town deep within Honduras. The separation has left a lasting mark on young Briany, who no longer breastfeeds since that January night. "I brought her to my breast," Flores recounted, "but she doesn’t want it anymore." The family now struggles to afford Briany’s preferred formula, relying on the continued generosity of the Vázquezes and their Lakeland congregation, who recently sent a box sufficient for several weeks.
Methodology and Verification
ProPublica’s groundbreaking analysis represents the most comprehensive accounting to date of U.S. citizen children whose immigrant parents have faced arrest, detention, and deportation. The investigation relied on a robust database of ICE I-213 records, obtained by the University of Washington, which immigration agents complete upon arresting individuals suspected of being in the country without authorization. These records detail the citizenship and number of minor children for each arrestee. The data specifically covers arrests by ICE, not Customs and Border Protection, spanning from late 2021 to mid-August 2025.
To track post-arrest outcomes, including detention, release, or removal, the I-213 data was meticulously combined with records from the Deportation Data Project, which covers late 2023 to mid-October 2025. The matching process, which linked approximately 85% of I-213 arrests to unique records in the Deportation Data Project, utilized common fields such as arrest date, gender, age, nationality, and arrest location. This linkage allowed for statements regarding the number of U.S. citizen children affected and the criminal history of their parents, as well as a comparative analysis of how mothers were treated under the Trump and Biden administrations.
To avoid double-counting children in cases where both parents were detained, ProPublica counted only the children of fathers when calculating the figure of over 11,000 U.S. citizen children affected, given that fathers constituted the majority of detained parents. All other calculations were performed at the arrest level. A parent was considered detained if booked into a facility for any duration according to the detention records. The criminal histories were derived from charges documented in these records.
ProPublica’s methodology underwent rigorous validation. Matches between the two datasets were verified by comparing marital status, processing disposition, and date of entry, which matched over 98% of the time. Systematic differences in representation across gender, ICE field offices, and nationalities between the I-213 dataset and the Deportation Data Project records were found to be negligible. Furthermore, ProPublica’s findings were compared against ICE’s own published statistics, showing approximately 15% fewer arrests in ProPublica’s data, a discrepancy potentially explained by the lower number of I-213 records compared to overall arrest records in the Deportation Data Project. The findings and methodology were reviewed by experts, including Phil Neff from the University of Washington Center for Human Rights, mathematician Joseph Gunther, and former ICE officials.
Additional contextual information and personal narratives were gathered through interviews conducted in Spanish and English with nearly two dozen detained or deported parents, their relatives, or legal representatives. Nonprofits such as the American Friends Service Committee and Each Step Home, which aid immigrant families like Flores’, also contributed to the reporting. The interviewed parents hailed from various Latin American countries, including Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, and Ecuador, and had established lives in diverse regions across the U.S.
The increasing reliance on aggressive enforcement, coupled with policy changes that diminish discretionary protections for parents, underscores a profound shift in U.S. immigration policy. This approach carries significant and often lasting human costs, particularly for the American citizen children inadvertently caught in the complex web of immigration law and enforcement.
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