More than 145,000 U.S. citizen children have likely experienced a parent booked into ICE detention since January 20, 2025, according to new Brookings Institution estimates published May 18, 2026. More than 22,000 of them lost all co-resident parents to detention.

The figures emerge from a period in which roughly 400,000 people were booked into Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention after interior arrests. Around 60,000 people are currently held. Detention capacity is set to expand under $45 billion allocated in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Brookings built its estimates with a new interactive tool that matches detainees' known demographics — country or region of origin, age, sex, and marital status — to likely unauthorized immigrants surveyed in the American Community Survey. The authors caution that the figures are estimates, not administrative counts.

Why does the official count fall short?

The ICE Detained Parent Directive, updated in July 2025, still requires ICE to ask detainees about parental status. In practice, anecdotal evidence suggests immigrants are often not asked, and some avoid mentioning their children out of fear of adverse consequences.

DHS publishes a fiscal year total of detainees with U.S. citizen children. The published FY 2025 figure of 18,277 parents is, in Brookings' assessment, almost certainly a substantial undercount. Even extrapolating from those official statistics, the analysis suggests around 60,000 citizen children have faced parental detention.

The matching approach implies about 27% of detainees are the co-residential parent of a minor child, and 20% have citizen children in the home. Overall, likely undocumented adults in the ACS show a 38% likelihood of parenting a minor child, but the detained population skews toward demographics with lower parenthood rates.

Using an estimate of 400,000 interior-arrest detentions between January 20, 2025 and April 9, 2026, Brookings puts the total number of affected children at around 205,000, of whom about 145,000 are U.S. citizens.

Who are the affected children?

The baseline analysis covers an estimated 146,635 citizen children with any parent detained. Key characteristics:

• 36% of affected children are under age 6.
• Almost 54% have a detained parent from Mexico; parents from Guatemala and Honduras combined account for more than 25%.
• Washington, D.C. and Texas have the highest shares, with more than 5 per 1,000 U.S. citizen children facing a parental detention.

A ProPublica study tracking ICE arrests of mothers of U.S. citizen children over the administration's first seven months found that 60% had been removed and 17% remained in custody at the study's conclusion. A majority of detentions, in other words, are not short-lived separations.

Where are the children now?

What happens to these children after an arrest is largely undocumented. The government publishes no systematic data on U.S. citizen children transported to foreign countries with deported parents.

Community partners encourage parents to prepare a family preparedness plan naming a friend or relative as caregiver. In many cases the government never learns of children left behind, and most parents avoid the child welfare system even when care options are substandard. Of the roughly 22,000 citizen children left without any parent at home, Brookings assumes only 5% — about 1,000 — have received child welfare services.

The study identifies a structural gap: no government entity bears responsibility for the well-being of detainees' children. ICE refers cases to child protection only when children are present at an arrest and no alternative care is immediately available. Child welfare agencies often avoid opening cases absent maltreatment concerns, some avoid documenting immigration-related separations for fear of worsening a child's situation, and some lack data systems to track such children at all.

How many more children are at risk?

The exposure extends well beyond those already affected. Brookings counts an estimated 13 million undocumented adults or adults with partial, liminal protections. Their households include more than 4.6 million U.S. citizen children living with a parent at risk of deportation — including roughly 2.5 million who, in a worst-case scenario, could face detention of every parent in their household.

The authors state: "Policymakers must reckon with the fact that many children are left without one or both parents as the result of immigration enforcement, that this is unlikely to change in the near term, and that no government entity is responsible for their well-being."

Brookings calls on DHS, at minimum, to collect and publicly report accurate data on parents facing detention or deportation and on U.S. citizen children who leave the country after a parent's removal. The report notes that most affected children are U.S. citizens, and concludes: "When we detain or deport a child's parents, the nation has a clear obligation to recognize, account for, and safeguard the child's well-being."