Donald Trump’s hardline mass deportation operations have led to a shocking number of parents being separated from their U.S. citizen children.
In the first seven months of Trump’s second term, the administration detained at least 11,000 parents of children who obtained birthright citizenship, ProPublica reported after analyzing ICE data obtained by the University of Washington’s Center for Human Rights.
If that pace has continued into early 2026, the number could have roughly doubled, and amount to an average of more than 50 U.S. citizen children being separated from their parents each day as they are processed into federal immigration detention centers.
ProPublica’s analysis also found that Trump is deporting about four times as many mothers of U.S. citizen children per day as his predecessor, Joe Biden. A majority of these mothers are also unlikely to return to their families once detained by ICE.
Under the Biden administration, about 30 percent of mothers arrested by immigration officials were eventually deported. Under Trump, that figure has skyrocketed to around 60 percent.
The rise in parents of U.S. citizen children being detained followed changes made by Trump administration officials to internal guidance for ICE agents.
The Parental Interests Directive was renamed the Detained Parents Directive when Trump returned to office. A line advising ICE agents to treat immigrant parents in a “humane” manner was removed from the document.
Another line was added stating that while ICE agents should still ask whether someone is a parent or legal guardian of a minor, and ensure children are placed in care before a parent is detained, the directive “in no way limits the ability of ICE personnel to make enforcement decisions on a case-by-case basis.”
Trump’s vow to carry out the largest mass deportation program in U.S. history was one of his main 2024 campaign pledges.
But following the aggressive tactics of masked immigration agents in Minnesota–which included the killing of two U.S. citizens–Trump is rapidly losing support for his hardline immigration policies, which could potentially doom the GOP in the midterms.
The administration has also begun shifting its messaging to avoid further alienating voters. A Politico analysis earlier this month found that no major Trump administration social media account has used the phrase “mass deportations” since Feb. 12.
The White House has frequently defended ICE’s aggressive tactics by saying the agency is targeting the “worst of the worst” undocumented migrants, including violent criminals.
However, ProPublica reported that more than half of detained fathers of U.S. citizen children and about three-quarters of mothers had only minor convictions in the U.S., such as traffic or immigration-related offenses.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told ProPublica that immigrant parents can choose to leave the country with their children or designate someone else to care for them, which is “consistent with past administrations’ policies.”
The spokesperson added that the revised directive “simply standardizes the required forms” and that “under President Trump, ICE will not ignore the rule of law.”
A White House spokesperson also said that people in the country illegally “who wish to avoid the deportation process should self-deport.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House and the Department of Homeland Security for further comment.
