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Mica Rosenberg@micarosenberg · Mar 23, 2026

NEW: For the first time, ProPublica has been able to quantify how many U.S. citizen children have been directly…

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Summary

ProPublica's investigation reveals that over 11,000 U.S. citizen children have had a parent detained under Trump's immigration crackdown, with mothers of U.S. citizens being deported 4 times more often than under Biden. The reporting documents cases of family separations and finds that ICE guidelines have been revised to remove language about 'humane' treatment of detained parents.

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  1. #1

    NEW: For the first time, ProPublica has been able to quantify how many U.S. citizen children have been directly affected by Trump’s immigration crackdown: more than 11,000 kids had a parent detained — and that’s an undercount. 1/ 🧵 propublica.org/article/trump-…

  2. #2

    My colleague @JeffErnsthausen analyzed data shared with @McKenzieFunk to find Trump is detaining more parents of US citizens with minor criminal histories or none at all. We also found that compared to Biden, moms of U.S. citizens are being deported 4x more often under Trump 2/

  3. #3

    In Florida, @marioarizabaez met Doris Flores, who was separated from her still nursing four-month-old and her other children when ICE detained her and her fiance at the same time. Her pastor and his wife took in the children, asking “What else could we do?” 3/

  4. #4
  5. #5

    I spoke to another mother, Griselda, picked up in Florida on her way to work. She was sent to ICE detention in Texas by herself even though she said she told agents about her 1-yr-old US citizen and 4-yr-old, who were with a babysitter. Their separation lasted four months. 4/

  6. #6

    What we counted: Every day, an average of 50 US citizen kids have had a parent detained. How did we do it? Our reporting included linking FOIA data to ICE flight manifests (research by @gluissandoval) and interviews with ~two dozen affected families 5/

  7. #7

    Why is this happening? Current and former officials said ICE guidelines on the way officers should exercise discretion have changed. One example: a directive on how agents should interact with parents was revised this year and stripped of the word "humane." 6/

  8. #8

    DHS said in a statement it does not separate families and that immigrant parents can choose to leave the country with their children or to designate someone to care for them, "consistent with past administration’s policies.” 7/

  9. #9

    Read more about the families we talked to and the U.S. citizen children separated from their parents by immigration detention here: 8/ propublica.org/article/trump-…