Number of Children in ICE Detention Skyrockets Under Trump

Welcome to this edition of Rally and Bob,

my host, Mans Musin.

Why is this happening to us,

daily numbers of children in icy tension jump,

six times under the Trump administration?

Today, we are joined by two esteemed journalists

reporting for the Marshall Project, Shannon Heffner,

and Anna Flay, who recently covered

the hard-firing stories of the rise

and child detention under the Trump administration.

Welcome to Rally and Bob.

Thank you so much for having us.

All right, so first, let's start with you,

Shannon, introduce yourself to our audience

and tell me a little bit about yourself.

My name is Shannon Heffernan.

I'm a staff writer at the Marshall Project.

I've covered prisons and jails for over a decade

and lately have been focusing on detention,

particularly collaborating with Anna

to talk about child detention.

I'll introduce yourself to our audience.

Yeah, hi, I'm Anna Flay.

I'm a data reporter at the Marshall Project,

also covering immigration criminal justice.

Been working with Shannon on family detention

and covering these issues of these children

in ice detention.

And I want to, I want to be mindful

that a lot of times,

main media are giving like a warning,

like warning, sensitive information is coming out.

I'm giving you a warning that what we're about to talk about

is not about a dog, we're talking about children,

we're talking about people, children that go to elementary school,

we're talking about children that's in kindergarten,

we're talking about children in prenatal care.

This is hard to find information.

We're going to start with you, Ann.

You did the numbers on the number of children

that's being detained.

And the fact that they're being detained

by astronomical numbers.

Tell our audience how you come about the numbers

and what these numbers mean.

Yeah, there's a group called the Deportation Data Project

that has been requesting ice records of detentions and arrests

and a bunch of enforcement actions that they've been taking.

And they've been routinely requesting those

and then publishing those online for reporters

and the public to see in general.

And I think that's just such a good service.

And we've been making use of that data a lot.

We looked at detentions of everybody

since I think it was the end of 2023.

And we kind of measured the number of children

that had been detained on a daily basis

since then, up till the end of the data set,

which is currently at the middle of October, 2025.

And we found that the number of children in ice detention

had gone up significantly.

It had increased sixfold and since Trump took office.

So on average, today, there are about 170 children

in ice detention.

And you can compare that to previously

under the Biden administration when it was about 25.

So it's a huge increase.

These numbers have, and they're constantly growing.

We're not sure because the administration has been pretty slow

and not very transparent about releasing the information.

So what we know, the only things that we know

are the information that they release.

So that data has not been updated since October of last year.

There's other statistics that show the general population

of family detention centers like Dilly.

So you can get some information from that

because you know that there are a certain number of people

in detention in the family facility.

And you know that some of those are going to be children,

but you don't know how many of them are children.

We do have some indicators, though,

by looking at things like arrest,

and the number of arrests that are happening

and the numbers Ana was mentioning,

that it is likely that those numbers have grown.

Now again, we won't know for certain

because we have also heard about some releases happening

at Dilly families being let out.

So hopefully we'll have a better sense

of what that actually looks like

in terms of daily numbers soon.

Okay, and since we're on that,

that's my next question anyway.

Can you describe the conditions at Dilly

and they call it the Immigration Processing Center in Texas?

And who runs it is a private owned

and specifically who's incarcerated there

as undocumented people being brought from other parts

of the country.

Yeah, so yes, people are being brought up

from all over to Dilly.

It's not just people in the Texas area.

We've seen folks go from Chicago

when they were doing the raids there.

We've seen folks go from Minneapolis

when the raids were happening there.

In terms of the conditions,

we've heard a lot of troubling information from people

who have been detained inside Dilly.

We've heard complaints of poor medical hair.

We've heard complaints at the water, smells and taste foul.

And we've heard complaints about food

that is contaminated with worms and mold

that the type of food they give

is not appropriate for children

that children are losing weight

because they're not getting appropriate food.

I should say that Corsific

and I'll talk a little bit more about them here shortly.

The company that runs it has, you know, basically said to us,

you know, we're under multiple levels of oversight.

We treat these families well

and refer us to ICE for any further information

who has not answered our detailed list of questions.

You asked about Corsifics.

I'll also address that.

Corsifics are private company.

They're one of the largest private detention companies

in the United States

and they run the Dilly Detention Center.

And Corsific also in the District of Columbia,

they're doing the halfway house for the DC code of finance

so they got their hand in all things, locking people up.

Shannon, talk about the different color uniforms

that the children are wearing.

What's the significance of it?

Yeah, to be honest with you,

I'm not familiar with the particular color

of uniforms they use at that facility.

I have seen different color systems

at other facilities,

but I unfortunately am not familiar

with the particulars at Dilly.

Do you know how much money Corsific

gave to Trump's campaign?

Yeah, we do know that they did make donations

to the Trump campaign, particularly his inaugural fund.

I will say that the amounts of money they gave,

we don't really have any indications

that this was like a pay for play kind of situation.

They are one of the larger organizations

and it could see a lot of other reasons

that this partnership might happen

just in terms of the infrastructure

Corsific already had under their belt.

But yeah, there's no doubt that they're turning

quite a bit to private companies

to operate the detention of immigrants.

This is different than what you've seen

in the criminal justice space

where so much of it is done by public institutions.

Right.

And June 26th or 2025,

it was reported that there were more than 400

children iced detention.

Can you give us some background information

on that at number and what's behind it today?

Yeah, so when we were looking at the numbers

of children being held over time,

what we saw was when Trump took office

at first, it kind of stayed stable

and then it started rising, rising, rising, rising.

And it got very high around the summer of 2025.

That was probably around when it peaked

and that's when you're referring to,

when there were a few days in June,

when there were more than 400 kids in iced detention.

And then we saw it go down a little bit after that.

Then it went up a little bit more.

And generally it has stayed pretty high, like relatively high

much higher than it was in the previous month's under Biden.

So we don't know much about the particulars

of those children who were there at the time

that it was at its peak,

but we do know that probably over 100 kids every day

are being held in iced detention.

And these facilities are not really designed

for children to stay there,

especially for long periods of time.

Do you have any read on where they're coming from?

I know we acknowledge that they bring them

from all over the country,

but as a concentration,

in particular part of the country,

like Chicago, California,

or is it just wherever it's a heavy ice present

like in Minneapolis,

it's wherever it's a heavy ice present,

they take in children.

I mean, I think one thing that we were able to see

from our data is that there's a lot more enforcement

on the interior of the country now.

So a lot of kids are getting picked up that way

rather than at the border

where they may be attempting to cross

or they might be on a company.

There's so much more enforcement

on the interior of the country now.

That's why we're seeing a lot more families

and children getting pulled in.

And I think that seems to be driven

by these quotas for high numbers of deportations

that the administration is asking for.

And I'll just add,

you mentioned these areas where there's been high presence

from ice like Chicago in Minneapolis,

where they're doing these sort of big raids,

where they might raid a whole apartment building

like they did in Chicago.

And we definitely have heard stories

of children being cut up in that.

But I think, and a lot of that's been more high profile.

But where we've also seen a lot of the arrests happening

and I think this is important to note,

is people showing up at their court hearings

or their ICE check-ins,

people who are literally complying with the rules

they've been given.

And that is the moment at which they are taken

with their children to daily.

Children are actually being detained by ICE

for people that's in compliance

with whatever order they've been given.

So what's the impact of that in terms of like,

people's abilities like to try to be consistent

with the procedure from your information,

are people reluctant to come to court?

I don't have data on that,

but what I do know is anecdotally,

I've heard about that from a lot of folks,

a lot of fear and some really hard decisions

they're making about do I show up at this court date,

do I show up and comply?

It felt both choices are feeling really risky

to folks right now.

And a lot of people I've heard anecdotally

before going to their hearings

or doing things like making plans with their friends

and family about like, okay, if this goes bad,

here's what I want to happen to my kids,

which is a very tough emotionally, financially decision

to make.

Because it has had a course turn to like virtue

in order to like prevent children from being taken

or from people, innocent people being rounded up.

That's not something I am particularly familiar with.

I have seen other people who serve children

switching to virtual services,

whether that be schools or communities trying to support

people not having to leave their homes

by doing things like laundry pickup or grocery drop off.

That doesn't mean the court aren't doing it.

It's just not an area that I've seen or I'm familiar with.

In your number crunch and it's doing the data,

what's the relationship between the number of children

being rounded up versus the number of children being detained?

As it is all coming to court with their parents,

have you been able to make a distinction between the two

that where in essence,

where are most of the children being gathered up?

Yeah, I mean, that's a really good question

and that's something that's I think a little bit hard

to get from the data.

I think the main thing that we're seeing

in terms of how the kids are getting brought in

is just this increased enforcement in the interior.

Because when there is more enforcement

inside the country, as opposed to at the border,

you're targeting families that have lived here for a long time.

There are kids and there are aunts and uncles

and it's like kind of a way of bringing in an entire family

into the enforcement.

And these are people who have lived in the community.

They have jobs there, they have friends,

they have communities, they go to school.

So that's sort of like anecdotally,

I think also, you know, to Shannon's point.

It's hard to see this from the data.

So.

And okay, in terms of like you wrote about how long

children being held in detention based on what the court

said is how long it should be held.

How did you come to this conclusion that you say that

over 1,000 children were held 20 days

beyond the court order, unpacked it for our audience?

So that is something that is in the data

because the data includes the time that the child was booked in

and the time that the child was booked out.

So you can tell how long they spent in the custody of ICE.

And we looked at those lengths of stay

and how those changed over time

and what they are looking like now

under the Trump administration.

And what you can see is that, you know,

so according to the guidance that is given to ICE,

they're really never supposed to take a child into custody.

Right.

And they do take a child into custody.

They need to try to get that child out as soon as possible.

And then the guidance on children that are not with their families

is they should be released within 72 hours.

And if children are detained with their families,

they need to be released within 20 days.

And that's, so that's what I supposed to do.

They're supposed to release the kids as soon as possible

and not more than 20 days.

So what we saw when we looked at how many kids were getting let out

after one day, two days, three days, 20 days

was actually a big bump around that 20-day mark,

which suggests that what ICE is doing

is actually folding kids as long as they can

under this court settlement

as a way of keeping them in detention for a long time.

And I think ideally, their goal is to deport people

straight out of detention.

And then in that thousand cases that we saw,

kids were actually being held longer than that 20-day limit.

Yeah, and some as many as several months,

I think is worth noting.

Some as many as several months.

And you think about those conditions.

We've heard that the education offerings are very poor.

It's not for many hours a day.

It's not a good match for the child.

And so those months are very precious at a young age

when you're talking about a developing mind.

And what we know from research is it

can have long-term effects on the child's emotional well-being,

on their education, and on their physical health.

Because we know that ICE is not in the business of childcare.

We know they primarily in the business of rounding adults up.

The children, for lack of a better word,

in this collateral damage, as relates to what they're doing,

I think that the bigger picture here is that once they,

because they're not in the business of childcare,

they don't have no mechanism for what to do with the children.

Once they get them, they're not going to put them in foster care

in the United States and give them that type of environment

where, to your point, Shannon, there will be a environment

where it will be more conducive to them at least being stable.

They're going to leave them in a detention environment

where they do a prison.

It's like warehouses.

I will say there are some children who are,

we don't know how many.

This is a number on and I would love to get out at.

There are some children who are ending up in the foster care system.

Do you can imagine this choice as a parent?

To the degree, they have a choice, they don't always.

Do I take with my child with me in detention

and try to ensure that we stay together if I am deported?

Do I allow them to stay with a family member

or go into the foster care system?

So they're not detained, but risk we may be separated?

I mean, I think that's a very difficult choice

that families are wrestling with

and the lawyers and advocates I speak to

don't feel like either of those situations

are really keeping the children safe.

Has a law superman found about the way they're doing this

mainly with the children?

So there's an ongoing legal settlement called Flores

that was decided decades ago.

And it basically provides guidance for what's supposed to happen.

This was a lawsuit that was filed on behalf

of a child that was detained.

It's important to note that like the Trump administration

is not the only administration that has detained children.

This has been a practice that has happened before

despite us now seeing a spike.

And that settlement to go back to it

is supposed to provide guidance

on what kinds of treatment children are supposed to get.

That's where that 20 day limit comes from.

But the Trump administration,

like previous administrations,

is trying to say that they should not

be under this settlement anymore.

They're trying to get out from that legal guidance

so that they're able to operate

without the guardrails of the Flores settlement offers.

So it's already been established

that they can't keep longer than 20 days

with the Trump administration is ignoring that?

Yeah, so that 20 day limit is a little confusing

because it's not like necessarily a hard line

on either side of it, it's a guidance.

But yeah, I think that if you look at the court filings

that people on the Flores side representing the children

have again and again and again,

so the government is not complying

with the settlement in multiple ways,

including that 20 day limit.

Talk about Operation Midway Blitz.

How did it impact the children?

Yeah, so I live in Chicago,

which is where Operation Midway Blitz happened.

This was the government's name for sending

multiple federal agents to the city of Chicago

to detain immigrants.

And that is certainly winded it down.

There's not as many agents here as there used to be.

They've been sending them to places like Minneapolis

where they've also gotten word

that that will be winding down.

That does not mean that immigration enforcement

is not happening here still.

It does still happen here,

but it's not quite at the level it was happening before,

but they could ramp it up again.

I think that's one of the things where people are kind of

closely watching where and if there'll be another surge

in what city that will be.

We do know that children were detained

as part of Operation Midway Blitz

and also with the ramp up of ice enforcement

in Minneapolis.

So these surges we do definitely see affect children.

And I should say it's not just the children

who are detained that we say being affected.

You think about school districts

like we've seen in Minneapolis

where multiple children are detained from that district.

That has a collateral effect on their fellow students

who are witnessing that on siblings

who might be left behind,

on neighborhood kids who see that.

I don't, I think as a child,

if you witness something like that

or you're aware of something like that,

it's likely to have a psychological effect on you.

So there's a ripple effect beyond the individuals

that are just detained.

As you were saying,

I was thinking about on a societal level

how this impact the psychic of the whole nation.

This is coming into this country

and to the psych of our children and when they,

they hear like, ISIS in the area

and it's all because under the pretense that

campaign promise that Trump made was

that he getting worse to the worse.

That the worst of the worst immigrants,

undocumented people coming to this country

come in all the crime in the world.

Therefore I gotta give it up

and then turn around and put a quote out

how many people you want to round it up a day.

So the people you round it up

is people that are here,

don't crime they committed is,

if it's a crime is,

they don't, they're not documented

and you interfere with their ability

to become documented.

But talk about both of y'all

can be waiting on this ear

and this is just from your viewpoint,

the families in the detention outside advocate.

How do y'all see the outside advocacy

because when Ray Most, the little boy,

everybody got, you know,

when we seen that and, you know,

that shocked the consciousness of the nation

say like everybody that was had an issue

or whatever was going on,

they in their mind couldn't fathom

a child with a coup d'on,

or innocent child being taken in by ICE.

How do y'all see the advocacy

and the protest against that?

And do you see this taking shape

throughout the country as this thing unfolds?

Yeah, I mean, I think we've definitely seen

a surge of interest since that picture

was taken of Liam Ramos.

We were reporting on this before

and then we were reporting after that image

and we've definitely seen a difference

in the type of attention that it got.

I think what's really important to note

is there are many, many children like him.

He happened to be the one that was caught

in a compelling photograph.

And I think that's important to note,

in part because these detention facilities

are closed places that the public can't freely go.

You're not going to get a generally

news photographer in there

or cell phone footage for someone.

And because it becomes that kind of black box,

I think it's something that can sometimes,

we're saying a moment of interest right now,

but sometimes be harder to get interest in

because you don't have those images.

And so one thing I would really encourage listeners

to think about is when you see that image

of a child like Liam remembering

how many other children there are like that

and remaining engaged even when you don't have

those sort of immediate images,

making sure you're staying informed

about things that might be happening

to the degree we can be informed

in detention in these places

where we have less visibility.

And yeah, I think that story about Liam

really showed how much the American public does care

about children and how children are being treated

and the idea of an immigrant child

that young being taken into detention.

And so it's exactly like Shannon said,

I think it's incumbent on us to understand

how many other kids like that are also experiencing

the same thing and not forget that.

Because I think the public made it clear

that they do care about this issue.

We talked about this,

but is there any litigation currently in existence

to try to like get some kind of rule

and detention of children?

Well, you have the ongoing florist settlement.

You also have people filing their own petitions.

There's been, you've seen this report in the media.

There's been like a huge rise

in the number of people filing petitions

to get releasing that their detention is unfair.

So you're seeing a lot of legal activity around this

right now.

And in many cases, actually saying the courts

be favorable to the family.

So I think that's one thing we'll be really watching

and tracking closely is how that continues.

What happens is some of the stuff possibly

makes its way up into higher courts.

Yeah, that's definitely something

we'll be watching very, very closely.

And as we close, you got any last words

that you want to say something?

No, I would just say that this is an issue

that I think, well, I think that just to repeat myself

from before, I think Americans really do care about it.

And as much division as there is about immigration policy

and how it should be enforced,

I think the issue of children being detained

and experiencing any kind of immigration enforcement actions

is something that Americans really care about and can agree.

So I think that's like a place to start

when we're trying to find some sort of agreement.

And if our audience want to follow you,

follow your work, how do they do that?

You can go to the Marshall project

and both of us are listed there.

And we would love to hear from listeners

about what they're saying on the ground.

This is an issue we're continuing to watch.

So if you're in one of these communities being affected,

please always feel free to reach us out.

Reach out to us about what questions you have

and what information you'd like to see revealed

as well as any tips you have for things

that you think need to be covered by the media.

And in regards to the conditions of the children,

do you think that, and we seem like when

Liam Ramos was handcuffed?

Do you think that in order for the really shake the nation's

conscious to earthquake proportion,

that one of these children happened to die

and custody or do y'all not have any of them died in custody?

I am not aware of any children

that have died in immigration custody.

I know that is a major fear

that a lot of the advocates and lawyers have

with the quality of medical care they say

they're staying inside the facility.

My hope would be, and I don't think this is a political message,

I don't think anybody wants to see a child die,

and my hope would be that that is not necessary

in order for something to get attention and care.

And we want to remind our audience

that as I opened up, we were talking about children

and regards to what we think children are innocent

and oftentimes adults impose their wield on children

and take their innocence from them.

But these children that we're talking about,

their innocence is being taken from them

by virtue of them not being documented in a country

that has a Statue of Liberty

and coming into the country,

saying welcome or open arms,

but when they get here, they're not being welcome

with open arms, they're being welcome

with the presence of ICE agents, they're being traumatized.

We asked that you really look at this

and ask yourself when you look at your child

as you put in the bed and how would you feel

if somebody knocked on your door and just stayed,

I'm gonna leave you where you at,

but I'm gonna take your child.

You would be horrified.

That's what the parents are going through of these children.

But more importantly, the impact of this particular

prepressions have on these children,

it's traumatizing these children forever.

And it's traumatizing the society known forever.

We asked that you continue to evaluate this information

and give us your comments on what you think.

We thank Shannon and Anna.

We thank you for coming on today

and we really greatly appreciate you taking time out

to educate our audience on the importance

of understanding this particular story.

Thank you so much for having us.

We appreciate your time.

Thank you.

And we asked that you continue to support

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because guess what, we actually, the real news.