ICE Took Mom And Dad. Now The Perez Kids Are Home Alone.

A staggering number of parents have been swept up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. From late January 2025 through early April 2026, more than 146,000 US citizen children had moms or dads detained, the Brookings Institution estimates. That’s about 330 a day. (Based solely on DHS records, the total would be closer to 60,000, according to Brookings researcher Tara Watson, who notes that the agency has done a poor job tracking the data.)

ICE is supposed to ensure that minors aren’t left alone after an arrest. But while reporting this story, I heard about young teens fending for themselves; about a dad who begged in vain for immigration officers to let him call his babysitter; about parents stepping off deportation flights in tears because they didn’t know whether their kids were safe. These are not isolated incidents—similar stories have been documented around the country.

Some rules remain, but ICE seems to be ignoring them. For instance, parents are meant to be detained close to where their children live, but moms like Olga Perez are regularly transferred across the country—one study found a twelvefold increase in transfers of noncriminal Latino detainees far from home. It’s all in line with the administration’s eagerness for immigrants to self-deport. “Shuffle flights”—moving a person from one facility to the next in quick succession—are also common and make it harder for detainees to meet with attorneys or make arrangements for their families. “Imagine that you were transferred to four or five different facilities” in as many days, says Zain Lakhani of the Women’s Refugee Commission. “Even if you manage to say, ‘I have children,’ you’re only there for 12 hours before you’re transferred to another facility, and you have to try to find someone who can listen.”