The Trump administration's intensified immigration enforcement has separated more than 145,000 American children from their detained parents since January, according to new research from the Brookings Institution released Monday.
The estimate offers the most comprehensive accounting yet of the human toll from the mass deportation campaign. Among the affected children, more than 22,000 lost both parents to detention simultaneously. The youngest and most vulnerable bore the heaviest burden: roughly 36% were younger than six years old.
Researchers at Brookings matched immigration detainees' demographic characteristics against census data to arrive at their estimate, a method they said was necessary because federal records substantially undercount the reality. The Department of Homeland Security reported detecting only 18,277 detainees with US citizen children in fiscal year 2025, but Brookings researchers called that figure "almost certainly a substantial undercount."
Many detained immigrants either fail to disclose they have children or are never asked by authorities, researchers noted. This gap between official reports and the true scale of family separations underscores how the enforcement surge has outpaced the government's ability or willingness to track its consequences.
The detentions hit some regions harder than others. Washington DC and Texas each reported more than five detained parents per 1,000 US citizen children, the highest rates nationally. Geographically, the separations largely reflected immigration patterns: 54% of affected children had parents from Mexico, while those from Guatemala and Honduras combined for more than 25%.
The pace of enforcement has accelerated dramatically. During the first seven months of 2025, roughly 18,400 parents were arrested, according to a Guardian investigation conducted in May. The administration averaged approximately 2,300 parental arrests and 1,400 deportations monthly in 2025, nearly double the deportation rate from the final months of the Biden presidency.
The broader vulnerability extends beyond those already detained. Brookings found that roughly 13 million undocumented or limited-status adults live in the US, meaning more than 4.6 million US citizen children live with at least one parent who could face deportation. About 2.5 million of those children could lose both parents if enforcement continues at current levels.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson rejected the premise of family separation, telling the Guardian that "being in detention is a choice" and that "ICE does not separate families." The agency claimed parents are offered the option to depart with their children or designate a safe person to care for them, describing the practice as consistent with past administrations.
That account conflicts with findings from the Womenâs Refugee Commission and Physicians for Human Rights. In a March report, those organizations documented cases where the Trump administration deported immigrant parents without asking about their children or offering them the choice to bring kids along.
Brookings researchers called for federal accountability, urging the Department of Homeland Security to publicly report accurate data on detained parents and US citizen children displaced by deportation. "For both logistical and political reasons, the administration will not achieve its stated goal of removing every unauthorized immigrant from the United States," the report stated. "At a minimum," it continued, "DHS should collect and publicly report accurate data."
The researchers further argued that supporting affected children "should be understood not as optional, but as a necessary governmental responsibility tied to the foreseeable consequences of family separation and displacement."
Author James Rodriguez: "The scale is staggering and the government's own numbers don't match the reality on the ground, which tells you everything about whether enforcement is really being managed with any concern for the kids caught in the middle."
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