500 infants and toddlers have been detained while hundreds of others face losing lifesaving healthcare due to the Trump administration’s mass deportation obsessions
Children continue to be abused in our name and with our tax dollars. Federal immigration data reveals that the Trump administration has detained at least 500 infants and toddlers since last year, finding that children have been detained in what parents have described as “substandard conditions” that have left youngsters “sick, isolated and regressing in their physical and intellectual development.”
“ICE has dramatically increased detentions of children aged 3 and under, holding 25 of them in custody on an average day between January 2025 and March of this year,” The Marshall Project and MS NOW report. That figure, based on records obtained by the Deportation Data Project, is “10 times higher than it was in the previous 12 months under former President Joe Biden. Back then, on an average day, fewer than three babies and toddlers were held at facilities across the country.”
Experts say that this increase in child detention under the mass deportation obsessions of the Trump administration – which just received another $70 billion in immigration enforcement spending thanks to its Congressional allies – could devastate their young lives for years to come.
“Marsha Griffin, a pediatrics professor and co-founder of the executive committee of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Council on Immigrant Child and Family Health, called the period of infancy and toddlerhood ‘probably the most harmful time of their lives to have them in detention,’” the report continued. “‘Our immigration system is breaking children,’ she said.”
One toddler who was detained with his mom at the CoreCivic-operated migrant family jail in Texas stopped eating for nearly two weeks after his family was ripped apart by the administration, The Marshall Project and MS NOW said. Despite never missing a check-in since applying for asylum in 2024, ICE detained and separated the family, sending two-year-old Kaleth and his mom to Dilley and his dad to a detention facility in California.
Kaleth’s mom, Joani, said the toddler became so depressed while detained at Dilley that he stopped eating for 12 days. “When Joani tried to force him to eat, Kaleth vomited,” the report said. “He eventually stopped having bowel movements. Joani watched her son’s face grow gaunt, and his eyes sink into their sockets.”
Kaleth and his mom were finally released after two weeks, meaning that the child ate no solid food for nearly the entire duration of his detention.
“The long-term damage caused by prolonged toxic stress — by essentially abusing these children — we’re going to see those effects. They’re going to impact every child who was there for many, many years to come,” advocate Lori Goodman said in the report. “It’s incalculable the amount of damage that is being done.”
The Trump and Miller mass deportation attacks on children extend far beyond those in detention. “Families in Tennessee with critically ill or severely disabled children who are undocumented are being asked to make a difficult choice: leave the state program that pays for lifesaving medication and treatment or stay and have their child reported to immigration authorities,” The Washington Post reports.
The state program, Children’s Special Services, serves as a last resort for critically ill, low-income kids diagnosed with cancer, spina bifida, and terminal diseases, helping “pay for ventilators, wheelchairs or feeding tubes, for example, or for expensive drugs and emergency treatments” regardless of legal status, the report said.
But under a Republican-passed state law that requires local and state agencies to check the papers of anyone receiving a public benefit, critically sick children who lack legal immigration status could now be reported to a recently-created state agency that collaborates with federal officials. Hundreds of families in the state have since received a letter instructing them to either leave the program or face being reported.
But as the Tennessee Outlook notes, there is no other safety net alternative in the state available to these children. “This is life and death for very, very many of these kids,” Tennessee Justice Center Executive Director Michele Johnson tells The Washington Post.
Gabriella, the asylum-seeking mom of a child with spina bifida, didn’t hesitate when she was told about the drastic changes by a Children’s Special Services coordinator: she would prioritize keeping her family together and disenroll. But now she doesn’t know what she’ll do to ensure her 10-year-old son can continue to receive the kind of lifesaving care he got under the program.
“Daneri is paralyzed from the waist down and uses a wheelchair,” The Washington Post reports. “He has had 12 operations, his mother said. He regularly has urinary infections, as is common with spina bifida, and he requires a catheter. Gabriella aids him with evacuating his bowels multiple times a day and administers his several daily medications. He also suffers from learning disabilities associated with the illness, and has autism.”
“I will not let him die. I will knock on doors, search for people, it doesn’t matter who I have to ask, who I have to talk to or wherever I have to travel. I will do anything,” the mom told The Washington Post. “Please tell people that my husband pays taxes,” Gabriella told the Tennessee Outlook. “We are not trying to take anything from other people. We are just trying to help our son, as any parent would.”
While the richest country in the world should not precondition healthcare accessibility on the ability to pay taxes, it is important to note that Gabriella’s family pays taxes that help fund this critical care. Nationwide, millions of undocumented immigrants pay billions in taxes to help fund federal programs they can’t access, such as Social Security and Medicare. And when billions are going to fund the kind of unpopular policies that could target Daneri and Gabriella, we have the means to take care of each other instead.
Other attacks against children also loom, including two potential Supreme Court rulings that could upend the lives of thousands of U.S. citizen kids. In Trump v. Barbara, up to 250,000 American citizen children annually could be born stateless should the justices side with the Trump administration’s unconstitutional executive order purporting to end birthright citizenship for the American-born children of certain non-citizen immigrants.
“What was once a fringe proposal championed by restrictionists in Congress has now become a central legal and political battle reaching the highest court in the land,” America’s Voice Legal Advisor David Leopold wrote in April. Affected children “would be forced into an underclass — denied access to health care and basic services, vulnerable to exploitation and abuse, and subject to constant risk of deportation through no fault of their own.”
In Trump v. Miot, Haitian immigrants who hold Temporary Protected Status could be forced to separate their families or uproot up to 50,000 American-born kids entirely should the justices also side with the administration’s lie-riddled attempt to terminate this humanitarian relief.
“Some of these children were born in the United States and are American citizens. Others arrived at an early age and have grown up in American schools and communities,” Thamara Labrousse, executive director of Haitian American organization Sant La, said in March “For many of them, the United States is the only home that they know. Their futures now hang in the balance.”
