More than 145,000 children in the United States have faced the detention of a parent by immigration authorities since Donald Trump began his second presidency in January, according to a new report from the Brookings Institution. The study, released on Monday, estimates that around 146,635 US citizen children have had a parent detained during the administration's mass deportation campaign, with over 22,000 losing both co-resident parents.
Roughly 36% of affected children were under six years old. The Brookings researchers found that nearly 54% of those children had a parent from Mexico, while parents from Guatemala and Honduras accounted for more than 25% of cases. Washington DC and Texas recorded the highest rates, with more than five per 1,000 children facing parental immigration detention.
The Department of Homeland Security reported 18,277 detainees with US citizen children in fiscal year 2025, but the Brookings team called this 'almost certainly a substantial undercount'. A separate investigation by the Guardian in May found that about 18,400 parents had been arrested in the first seven months of 2025, affecting up to 32,000 children, including at least 12,000 US citizens.
The Trump administration has arrested around 2,300 parents and deported about 1,400 each month in 2025 — nearly double the monthly deportation rate under Joe Biden in 2024. Brookings researchers noted that many immigrants may not disclose having children out of fear, and they relied on demographic data from the Detention Data Project and the American Community Survey for their estimates.
With roughly 13 million undocumented or limited-status adults in the US, more than 4.6 million US citizen children live with a parent vulnerable to deportation. The report urges the government to collect and publish accurate data on affected families, arguing that 'ensuring that affected children have access to basic supports and protections should be understood not as optional, but as a necessary governmental responsibility'.
