More babies are behind bars in America than ever before, and it’s all thanks to President Donald Trump.
The number of babies and toddlers in ICE custody has skyrocketed since Trump took office last year, according to a new report by MS NOW and The Marshall Project.
The report, which analyzed records obtained by the Deportation Data Project, found that the agency has considerably upped its detentions of children aged 3 and under during Trump 2.0.
On a typical day, the analysis concluded that ICE held an average of 25 babies and toddlers in custody between January 2025 and March 2026—totaling at least 500 young children since Trump took office.
The number is 10 times higher than the previous 12 months under President Joe Biden, when fewer than three young children, on average, were held in facilities nationwide each day.
The report also found that at least 175 babies and toddlers were held beyond the court-mandated 20-day limit, established in 2015 under an opinion on the 1997 settlement in Flores v. Reno.
The outlet reported that young children in ICE detention experienced poor conditions that made them sick and limited their physical and mental development.
Pediatrics professor Marsha Griffin told MS NOW that the period of growth from infancy through toddlerhood is “probably the most harmful time of their lives to have them in detention.”
“Our immigration system is breaking children,” Griffin, the co-founder of the executive committee of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Council on Immigrant Child and Family Health, added.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House and ICE for comment on the report.
Reached for comment, a DHS spokesperson told the Daily Beast in a statement: “ICE is not targeting children or separating families. Parents are asked if they want to be removed with their children or ICE will place the children with a safe person the parent designates. This is consistent with past administrations’ immigration enforcement.”
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has seen a drastic shift since Trump, 79, stepped in as commander-in-chief for the second time.
The administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement policies, orchestrated by Trump’s deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, have outraged many Americans across the country and have even resulted in the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens by federal immigration officers.
ICE’s medical care in its facilities has come under fire over the last few weeks, with protests outside the Delaney Hall ICE detention center in Newark, New Jersey, reaching a boiling point over detainees launching a hunger strike over the facility’s rotten food and substandard conditions.
A leaked memo to staff last week from the agency’s acting director, David Venturella, also revealed that ICE will no longer be required to report deaths that happen within 30 days of detainees being released from custody—a Biden-era policy.
“ICE is returning to the standard practice of reporting deaths that occur while an individual is in agency custody,” Venturella wrote, according to The Washington Post.
ICE had previously reported 18 detainee deaths this year, which was on track to surpass last year’s total of at least 30 deaths—the highest number in two decades.
