ProPublica is out with a new investigative piece on deportations, but this one focuses not on the deportees but on their children. An analysis of internal ICE records obtained via a University of Washington lawsuit finds that in the first seven months of President Trump's second term, authorities detained the parents of at least 11,000 US children, which translates roughly into 50 kids a day losing a parent to detention. (The 11,000 total is likely doubled by now.) Arrests of immigrant parents with US-born children are happening roughly twice as often as under Joe Biden, and outcomes are harsher: nearly 60% of such cases now end in deportation, compared with about 30% during Biden's tenure.
The impact on mothers is especially sharp. The ProPublica reporters found that the Trump administration is deporting moms of US children at about four times Biden's rate. The government isn't deporting the children outright in most cases, but it forces a choice: The children stay in the US without a parent (perhaps with friends or other relatives), or they leave the country to be with their parents even though they are citizens. The story follows individual cases and describes a variety of outcomes. It also notes a shift in semantics: A Homeland Security policy that was previously called the Parental Interests Directive is now the Detained Parents Directive, and the word "humane" has been stripped from instructions given to agents on how to best deal with immigrant parents in this situation. Read the full story.
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