Over 11,000 US kids had a parent detained by ICE under Trump, analysis finds

Immigration agents under President Donald Trump separated at least 11,000 U.S. citizen children from a parent in the first seven months of his second term, a ProPublica analysis found.

The analysis, based on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) records the University of Washington Center for Human Rights obtained as part of an ongoing public records lawsuit, found that arrests of parents of U.S. citizen children occurred twice as often under Trump as under Biden. About 30% of such arrests ended in removal under Biden; under Trump, that figure rose to almost 60%, with mothers of U.S. citizen children removed at roughly four times Biden’s daily rate.

Most had minor criminal histories. About three-quarters of detained mothers and more than half of detained fathers had no U.S. convictions other than traffic or immigration violations. Even so, DHS has reportedly disputed the data, with Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis stating, “ICE does not separate families.”

Though the ProPublica data centers largely on Latin American families, the draconian crackdown has cut deep into Asian American communities. A recent Stop AAPI Hate report combining ICE data with a January 2026 NORC survey found that enforcement actions against Asian and Pacific Islander people climbed from about 2,000 in the first 10 months of 2024 to more than 7,700 in the same stretch of 2025. More than half of the respondents also said enforcement had affected them or someone they knew.

Another recent AAPI Data/AP-NORC poll of 1,197 AAPI adults found that close to three in four respondents held a negative view of ICE, compared with 60% of the general public. Meanwhile, more than six in 10 said Trump had gone too far in deporting immigrants living in the country illegally.

If the pace of arrests held steady after the data’s mid-August 2025 cutoff, ProPublica projects the total number of affected U.S. citizen children has roughly doubled since then.