Hundreds of Babies and Toddlers Held in Immigration Detention as Families Report Medical Neglect, Developmental Harm

At least 500 babies and toddlers — children aged 3 and under — have spent time in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody since the Trump administration took office, according to new data analyzed by The Marshall Project. On an average day, ICE now holds 25 of these very young children, ten times the number detained during the final year of the Biden administration.

Parents held at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas, the primary facility used to detain families with children, have filed formal complaints alleging their babies and toddlers suffered prolonged illness, developmental regression, inadequate medical care, and harmful conditions — claims detailed in court filings by attorneys representing more than 80 detained families.

One mother watched her 2-year-old son stop eating for 12 days after ICE separated the family at a routine check-in appointment in California and detained the child and mother at Dilley while sending the father to a separate adult facility. Facility doctors attributed the child’s refusal to eat to depression, according to his mother’s account. Another toddler, a 1-year-old, stopped speaking except for two words — “mom” and “dad” — during four months of detention, his parents said.

A third child, also 1 year old, was eventually hospitalized for more than a week with COVID-19, pneumonia, bronchitis, RSV, and an ear infection after her mother said Dilley medical staff repeatedly turned the family away with only Tylenol. The mother recalled asking clinic employees, “How long are you going to leave her like this? Are you going to let her die?”

ICE did not respond to questions about specific cases but said in a statement that families with children receive appropriate food, water, and medical care. CoreCivic, the private company operating Dilley, echoed that its facilities are safe for infants and toddlers and provide necessary supplies including formula, healthy food, and clean drinking water.

A May court filing by attorneys for detained children called ICE’s claims “fanciful.”

Elora Mukherjee, a Columbia Law School professor who has represented families at Dilley, said nearly all her clients in recent months complained about poor medical care. “Kids at this age also get sick more easily because their immune systems haven’t developed,” Mukherjee said. “Having such young children in a prison setting with hundreds of other kids and parents, it just makes them repeatedly, constantly sick.”

The sharp increase in detentions of very young children follows the Trump administration’s decision to restart family detention and reopen the Dilley facility shortly after taking office. The Biden administration had ended the practice in 2021.

At least 175 babies and toddlers were held longer than the 20-day limit set by a 1997 settlement governing treatment of children in immigration detention, according to records obtained by the Deportation Data Project. During the last year of the Biden administration, no children aged 3 or younger were held beyond that limit.

Pediatrics experts say the period from birth to age 3 is critical for brain development, when more than a million new neural connections form every second. Marsha Griffin, a pediatrics professor and co-founder of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Council on Immigrant Child and Family Health, called infancy and toddlerhood “probably the most harmful time of their lives to have them in detention.”

Separately, an analysis by EdSource found that ICE has detained more than 650 children in California communities during the first year of Trump’s second term. Another analysis by the Brookings Institution estimates that over 200,000 children nationwide — including 145,000 U.S. citizen children — have had at least one parent detained since Trump returned to office. About a third of those children are under age 6.

The separation and detention are creating what mental health professionals describe as a generation-wide mental health crisis. Therapists working with immigrant families report encountering preschoolers with speech delays, elementary school children who talk of suicide, and teenagers too anxious to leave the house. Research shows that separating children from parents increases their risk for depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, weakened immune systems, developmental delays, and long-term chronic health problems including heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.

One 15-year-old U.S. citizen, Damian Zermeño, came home from school in October to find his father had been deported to Mexico during what was supposed to be a routine ICE check-in appointment. His father, Saúl Zermeño, had deferred action allowing him to stay and work in the U.S. and had complied with check-in requirements for years, according to the family’s attorney. ICE officers did not ask about Damian or check on his well-being when they deported his father, Saúl said.

Damian, who has ADHD, autism, and a genetic condition requiring regular medical monitoring, didn’t want to leave his room, eat, or go to school for days after his father’s deportation. His grades have dropped and he no longer wants to do things he used to enjoy. “Fun is over,” the teenager said. “It’s time to be an adult right now.”

A 9-year-old boy whose mother was detained at a check-in appointment in January while he sat in the waiting room with his father stopped eating, attending school, and sleeping. His teacher called home to ask why he was crying in class. The boy’s family had fled Colombia after paramilitary threats and were seeking asylum; his mother has a pending asylum application and no criminal record, according to the father.

Parents at Dilley described other conditions they say harmed their young children: lights kept on all night, preventing sleep; tap water that smelled foul and made children sick; staff forcing a mother to wean her 1-year-old off formula, claiming he was too old; and prohibitions on security blankets or stuffed animals in sleeping areas.

One father said CoreCivic employees woke him in the middle of the night and threatened to separate the parents into different detention centers and place their toddler in foster care if they didn’t stop complaining about inadequate food. “As a husband, as a father, I can see the sufferings of my child, I can see how much my wife suffers,” the father said. “It was horrific for me, because I could do nothing to help them.”

A report by the Women’s Refugee Commission and Physicians for Human Rights found that ICE often doesn’t ask detainees if they have children or take steps to ensure children left behind are safe, contrary to the Department of Homeland Security’s statement that the agency does not separate families and asks parents whether they want to be removed with their children or designate a safe caregiver.

The number of children with detained parents is expected to grow as the federal government pours over $200 billion into immigration enforcement, including funding from the GOP’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act and a $70 billion appropriation Trump signed this month. More than 4.6 million U.S. citizen children live with a parent at risk of deportation, according to the Brookings analysis.

The Breakdown

• ICE is now holding an average of 25 babies and toddlers aged 3 and under on any given day — ten times the number detained during the final year of the Biden administration — with at least 500 total detained since Trump took office.
• At least 175 of these very young children were held longer than the 20-day limit set by a 1997 court settlement; during Biden’s last year, no children this young were held beyond that limit.
• Parents and attorneys representing detained families have filed formal complaints alleging toddlers stopped eating, stopped speaking, regressed developmentally, and were denied adequate medical care at the Dilley facility in Texas, the primary center used to detain families with children.
• An estimated 200,000 children nationwide — including 145,000 U.S. citizens — have had at least one parent detained since Trump returned to office; about a third are under age 6.
• Medical and child-development experts say the period from birth to age 3 is the most harmful time for detention because of rapid brain development occurring during these years, and that separation from parents increases children’s risk for lifelong mental and physical health problems.

What This Means for You

The Trump administration’s immigration enforcement policies — policies set by the President you elected or voted against — are shaping the lives of hundreds of thousands of children, including U.S. citizens who will grow up in your community. The decision to restart family detention, reopen facilities like Dilley, and dramatically increase removals was made by this administration; the conditions inside those facilities and the choice not to ask detained parents about their children’s welfare are how that policy is actually carried out.

When you vote for President, Congress, or state and local officials who control cooperation with federal immigration enforcement, you are voting on whether this continues. The more than $200 billion in new immigration enforcement funding Congress has appropriated — that is your tax money, allocated by officials you elect, and the practical result is 25 babies and toddlers in federal custody on an average day, plus the 200,000 children with a detained parent that therapists say are exhibiting depression, anxiety, speech delays, and suicidal ideation.

The health consequences medical experts describe — weakened immune systems, PTSD, chronic disease risk stretching into adulthood — do not stay behind detention-center walls. These children live in Fresno and the Central Valley; their long-term outcomes will shape your schools, your hospitals, your neighborhoods. A generation-wide mental health crisis is not someone else’s problem to solve; it is the direct result of policy decisions made by officials whose names were on your ballot.

What to Watch

The formal complaints filed by attorneys representing detained families are accountability claims against a federal agency — exactly the kind of record that tells you how an administration’s stated policy translates into actual practice. ICE says families receive appropriate care; parents and their attorneys, in sworn statements and court filings, describe children regressing, starving, and being denied medical treatment. One of those accounts is true, and the other is a lie. Which one you believe has everything to do with whether you think this administration deserves your vote again, or whether the officials funding it in Congress have earned another term.

The broader tension here is real: enforcing immigration law is a legitimate government function, and voters reasonably disagree on how strictly it should be done. But there is no legitimate policy reason for a 1-year-old to stop speaking, for a 2-year-old to go 12 days without eating while detained, or for a toddler to end up hospitalized with pneumonia after a detention facility’s medical staff repeatedly turned the family away. If these complaints are accurate — and the pattern across dozens of families represented by multiple attorneys suggests they are — then what you are funding is not immigration enforcement, it is the systematic mistreatment of children too young to understand why it is happening to them.

The question worth asking is: whose decision was it to reopen family detention, to hold toddlers beyond the 20-day limit, to allocate billions more for enforcement without corresponding accountability for how detainees are treated? That official’s name is on record. When you vote, you are deciding whether that judgment, and those results, deserve to be rewarded or ended.