At least 500 babies and toddlers have been detained during the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, according to a report.
The study also found that as many as 25 children aged 3 or younger were being held in custody on an average day between January 2025 and March 2026.
According to the research, carried out by The Marshall Project and MS NOW using records obtained by the Deportation Data Project, that figure is 10 times higher than it was during the previous 12 months under former President Joe Biden. During that period, fewer than 3 babies or toddlers were held at facilities across the U.S. on an average day.
Also, between Trump’s second inauguration and March 2026, ICE held at least 175 babies and toddlers for longer than a court-mandated limit of 20 days. During the final year of the Biden administration, no children aged 3 or younger were held beyond the 20-day limit.
A federal judge interpreted the limit to be 20 days in a 2015 opinion on the 1997 settlement in Flores v. Reno, which governs the treatment of children during immigration detention.
Marsha Griffin, co-founder of the executive committee of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Council on Immigrant Child and Family Health, told MS NOW and The Marshall Project that the period of infancy and toddlerhood was “probably the most harmful time of their lives to have them in detention.”
Griffin, who is also a pediatrics professor, added, “Our immigration system is breaking children.”
Kaleth, a 2-year-old boy, his mother, Joani, and his father were detained in March after showing up at a check-in appointment with immigration officials in California. The family sought asylum in 2024 and had never missed a required appointment with immigration officials, the family’s lawyer told MS NOW and The Marshall Project.
Joani and Kaleth were taken to the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas, while the father was handcuffed and taken to an adult detention facility in California. Without his father, Joani said that her son became despondent and stopped eating for 12 days.
Doctors at the facility attributed the behavior to depression. When Joani tried to force him to eat, Kaleth vomited. Eventually, he stopped having bowel movements.
“He was so distressed that it manifested in his body in not being able to eat or digest,” Lori Goodman, who has worked with the family and is the CEO of LEAP, said. “The longer a child is in that setting, the more the long-term damage.”
LEAP is a non-profit group that supports families with young children in California.
Elora Mukherjee, a professor at Columbia Law School who has represented more than 80 children incarcerated at Dilley over the past year, told MS NOW and The Marshall Project that nearly all of her clients in recent months have complained about poor medical care.
According to her, having large numbers of children and parents in a prison setting leaves youngsters vulnerable to fevers, vomiting, diarrhea, and coughing.
Kaleth and his mother were released in April, and the youngster has been reunited with his father. Goodman says that the boy is recovering well.
An ICE spokesperson told MS NOW and The Marshall Project that the agency is “working rapidly and overtime to remove these aliens from detention centers to their final destination – home.”
In a May court filings obtained by the network, representatives for ICE said that babies under 12 months of age receive bottled water to make formula and that children have access to outdoor play structures, toys, multilingual books and age-appropriate meals and snacks.
Brian Todd, a spokesperson for CoreCivic, a private prison operator, told MS NOW and The Marshall Project that Dilley provides toddlers and babies with necessary supplies, including healthy food, drinking water and formula.
The Independent has contacted ICE and CoreCivic for comment.
More details here...
