More than 145,000 children in the United States have likely experienced the detention of a parent by immigration authorities since the start of Donald Trump’s second presidency, according to a new report by the Brookings Institution. The study, released on Monday, estimates that about 146,635 children who are US citizens had a parent detained during the mass deportation campaign that began after Trump took office in early January. Of those, over 22,000 experienced the detention of all co-resident parents.
Roughly 36% of the affected children were younger than six years old, highlighting the impact of a hardline immigration enforcement strategy that has drawn widespread criticism from civil rights and immigrant advocacy groups. The report found that the largest share of US citizen children with a detained parent are linked to Mexico, accounting for nearly 54%, while children with parents from Guatemala and Honduras together make up more than 25%.
Washington DC and Texas have the highest share of American children with an affected parent, with more than five per 1,000 facing parental immigration detention. The Brookings researchers noted that the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reported 18,277 detainees with US citizen children in fiscal year 2025, but said this figure was “almost certainly a substantial undercount”.
Earlier in May, a Guardian investigation found that the arrest of about 18,400 parents had affected as many as 32,000 children in the first seven months of 2025 alone, including at least 12,000 US citizen children. The investigation also found that the Trump administration had arrested about 2,300 parents and deported about 1,400 parents each month in 2025, nearly double the monthly deportation rate recorded in 2024.
Brookings researchers pointed to anecdotal evidence suggesting that many immigrants are either not asked whether they have children or choose not to disclose that information out of fear. They relied on demographic data from the Detention Data Project, matching detainees’ characteristics with similar undocumented individuals identified in the American Community Survey. Roughly 13 million adults in the US are undocumented or hold only limited legal protections, meaning more than 4.6 million US citizen children live with at least one parent vulnerable to deportation.
In a statement to the Guardian, a DHS spokesperson argued that “being in detention is a choice” and that “ICE does not separate families”. The spokesperson said parents are asked if they want to be removed with their children or if ICE should place the children with a safe person the parent designates. However, a March report by the Women’s Refugee Commission and Physicians for Human Rights found that the Trump administration deported many immigrant parents without asking whether they had children or allowing them to decide if their children would accompany them.
