“Why are we allowing ICE agents to terrorize our neighbors and traumatize our children?” asked one advocate. “Why are we watching as laws are broken in broad daylight?”
During a Congressional shadow hearing last week, the ranking member of the House Subcommittee on Immigration, Integrity, Security, and Enforcement said that the federal government’s abusive mistreatment of children was so severe that it merits prosecution of mass deportation agents and compensation for victims.
“We need real accountability, because at the end of the day, the people that have been inflicting this harm need to be prosecuted,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (WA-07) said during the “Kidnapped and Disappeared: Trump’s Attack on Our Children” hearing Friday. “They need to be brought before us, and they need to be held [to] account for the trauma they have created – and we are going to have to have some form of reparation for the kids and the families that have been traumatized through all of this.”
“[Trump]’s cruelly ripping apart families, detaining people of all statuses.” – Rep. @jayapal.house.gov This isn’t about public safety it’s about cruelty as policy. As Rep. Jayapal highlights, children are being left behind, detained, or forced to navigate our broken immigration system alone.
— America's Voice (@americasvoice.bsky.social) 2026-03-30T15:00:04.762Z
In often-times emotional testimony, Nicole Isern, an educator from Montgomery County Public School system in Maryland, told lawmakers how mass deportation policies are posing a grave harm that traumatize children regardless of legal immigration status. Students and their families are living under “constant fear,” she said.
“We have seen ICE agents use elementary school parking lots as staging grounds. Places meant for morning drop-off have turned into sites of surveillance and intimidation. School parking lots should not be law enforcement bases or immigration checkpoints,” she testified. “We’re talking about young children in pigtails walking to school, witnessing their neighbors getting aggressively taken. Fear enveloping their whole little selves as they sit by the window on the bus, only to see hard-working neighbor put in handcuffs while his wife screams in desperation.”
Isern said this state-sanctioned violence has been having profound psychological effects on children, with parents telling her that their children have been experiencing trouble sleeping, nightmares, crying fits, and panic attacks. She said she knew of one 17-year-old who was admitted to a psychiatric facility following their mother’s abduction, while another child – just five-years-old – expressed suicidal ideations following their mother’s detention.
During his brave testimony to lawmakers, 17-year-old U.S. citizen Manny shared how he worries about family separation every time he watches his parents leave for work. He’s one of 4.7 million American citizen children who have at least one undocumented parent, according to the Center for Migration Studies. Researchers say that an estimated 5.62 million American citizen children overall have at least one undocumented family member.
“At 16, I never thought I would ever need to attend my local city council meeting, but I summoned the courage, with God’s and my family’s help, to share the pain we were feeling in our community and to fight for our rights,” Manny said. “Today, I’m 17-years-old, and never would I have imagined being in the most powerful building in the country, to share the pain that our town is experiencing, and to plead for your help.”
During Rep. @jayapal.house.gov’s shadow hearing last week, Manny shares the fear so many U.S. citizen children are living with:“I’m scared when my parents leave the house in the morning for work. I don’t know if I’ll be able to see them again or if I’ll be able to hug them again.”
— America's Voice (@americasvoice.bsky.social) 2026-03-31T15:47:15.124Z
“Instead of messaging their friends,” teens are messaging attorneys following the detention of their family members, Isern continued. “Teens are putting college on hold, and putting all of their savings into exorbitantly high $20,000 bonds. They’re taking on jobs to avoid eviction.” Earlier this month, NBC Washington reported how Maryland teen Mark Briseno has had to get an afterschool job to help his mom with bills following his dad’s abduction by ICE.
“I send her money so she can pay the bills,” he said. “I remind her we have this bill, this bill, and we’re just working together now.” Briseno is also struggling with the reality that his dad may miss one of the most important days of his life. “My biggest thing is to let my parents, both of them, see me graduate,” he said. “That’s almost every kid’s hope, right? All my friends have their parents ready to see them graduate, but unfortunately, it’s just gonna be my mom this year.”
“Why are we allowing ICE agents to terrorize our neighbors and traumatize our children?” Isern continued in her remarks. “Why are we watching as laws are broken in broad daylight?”
Rep. @jayapal.house.gov: “Children as young as four and five years old… left to defend themselves… against a government attorney.”Kids belong in classrooms and playgrounds. not in courtrooms fighting for their future alone.
— America's Voice (@americasvoice.bsky.social) 2026-03-30T21:25:11.186Z
During a separate hearing last week hosted by U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), ranking member of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, and Rep. Robert Garcia (CA-42), ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, 16-year-old U.S. citizen Arnoldo Bazan bravely shared how he was physically, verbally, and emotionally assaulted by mass deportation agents who were abducting his father.
“Officers grabbed me and ripped my shirt. One officer put me in a choke-hold. The officer choking me told me, ‘You’re done.’ His grip was so tight that I wondered if I would make it out alive,” Arnoldo testified. “With all of my strength, I screamed that I was underage and from the United States.” When he was finally let go, the teen began yelling to bystanders that he had proof on his phone that agents had tried to flip his family’s car. That’s when the same agent then seized his phone, threw him into a vehicle, and began to verbally abuse him.
“They mocked us,” he continued. “They told me I was ‘gay for crying,’ ‘an illegal idiot,’ a ‘border hopper,’ and other demeaning words. These officers even celebrated that they caught two people and that their bonus would be good.” Arnoldo and his dad were then driven back to their house, where the teen said he was able to pray with his dad for a final time. “I tried to hug him, but he couldn’t hug me back because he was handcuffed.”
The teen was hospitalized following his release, and to add insult to injury, later discovered that his confiscated phone – which contained video evidence that federal officers had endangered him and his dad – had been resold. “When I finally recovered, I used the application Find My to locate my iPhone 2 miles from where my father was detained,” he said. “My phone was inside a kiosk for people to sell used electronics. Someone sold my phone.”
His attempt to file a report with local police went nowhere – he was told “that they ‘can’t do anything’ to federal officers. I later learned from my dad that he was threatened. Unless he signed papers to self-deport, the government would send me to juvie and federal prison. So my father signed.” Arnoldo is now separated from his dad and continues to be affected by that violent day.
“When I go to school, I pray I come home safely,” he said. “Whenever I hear sirens or see an officer, my heart starts racing. I don’t even know when I will see my father again. I’m sharing my story so that this doesn’t happen to other people. This is not the America that I know.”
Rep. Jayapal pointed to the recent ProPublica report finding that mass deportation agents have detained the parents of more than 11,000 U.S. citizen children, including nursing babies. But the administration is not acting alone in inflicting this government-sanctioned child abuse. Last year, its Congressional allies passed legislation that turned ICE into the highest-funded law enforcement agency in the nation. Taxpayer money that could have gone to funding Head Start, paid for nutritious school meals, or opened up higher education opportunities for kids like Manny and Arnoldo is instead going to traumatize them, possibly for life.
By refusing to pass common-sense reforms to rein in the mass deportation agency it has enabled, those same lawmakers are making a deliberate decision to let this permanent damage against American children rage on.
“Having a parent kidnapped and disappeared is bad enough,” Rep. Jayapal continued during her shadow hearing. “But too often, ICE is using violence to arrest parents right in front of their children or even as ‘bait’ as we saw with the horrific case of 5-year-old Liam Ramos — the young child with the bunny ears hat that galvanized attention across the country. I thank our incredible witnesses for being here today to shine a light on the pain that Trump is causing.”
