cross-posted from: https://infosec.pub/post/49553668
U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement has detained more than 650 children in California under President Donald Trump’s second term, an EdSource analysis of federal data has found. Most arrests happened in California communities, rather than at the border, and involved minors who resided and attended school in the state.
The number of children detained in the state’s interior rose 90% during the first year of Trump’s second term compared to the prior year under the Biden administration, our analysis shows. More than 100 of the children detained under Trump were age 5 or under.
The rise in child detainments in the state’s interior began soon after Trump took office in January 2025. Trump won office on a promise to carry out mass deportations, vowing to deport “illegal immigrant killers, rapists, and drug dealers from our streets and sending them back where they belong.”
Starting immediately and escalating over the summer of 2025, ICE agents have conducted large-scale operations in neighborhoods with large immigrant populations. Some children have been detained while accompanying parents to routine ICE check-ins. The practices reflect an escalation in enforcement activity that state education officials say has kept some students from attending school.
The children detained, so far, include a 17-year-old honors student from Los Angeles County who was detained in June 2025 and deported to Guatemala; a 9-year-old boy from Torrance who, along with his father, was detained at an immigration hearing that same month and deported to Honduras; and a 6-year-old deaf student who, in March, was detained without his hearing aids and deported to Colombia along with his mother and younger brother.
Medical professionals and advocates contend that no period of time in detention is safe for children. In 2016, a Department of Homeland Security Advisory Committee recommended discontinuing the use of family detention — the practice of detaining children with their parents as they await the outcome of their case — writing “detention is never in the best interest of children.”
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During his second term, Trump reopened family detention facilities, including the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley and the Karnes County Immigration Processing Center in Texas. In California, 250 detained children were ultimately sent to these family facilities.
A 12-year-old from Los Angeles, identified by the initials G.S., gave a declaration in federal court describing their experience living inside the South Texas Family Residential Center during a 64-day detainment with their parents and younger sister.
The child said ICE agents detained the family during a routine ICE check-in in Los Angeles. The family lost their apartment and belongings, according to the May 22 declaration. The status of the child and their family is unclear.
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California has passed laws and issued guidance with the aim of shielding schools from federal immigration enforcement. For instance, under California law, school officials cannot allow immigration officials on campus without a judicial warrant.
In some California communities, parents, teachers and neighbors have formed rapid-response networks to report sightings of ICE agents for students and their families to avoid while commuting to and from school.
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Children may not be detained at the same rates that adults are, but medical experts warn that any time spent in detention is too long for their well-being.
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“We have endless amounts of research and expert testimony on how harmful detention is to children,” said Michelle Brané, who was the immigration detention ombudsman under the Biden administration, and now leads the nonprofit Together and Free, which supports asylum-seeking families. “You see kids with extreme depression. You see kids really regressing, kids going back to wetting the bed after they’ve been trained for years.”