Trump Administration Has Detained More Than 500 Babies and Toddlers: Report

Photo by Kyle Mazza/NurPhoto via AP

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has detained at least five hundred babies and toddlers since President Donald Trump began his second term, according to a new report.

ICE held an average of 25 children aged three or younger per day, an analysis by MS NOW and The Marshall Project showed. Data obtained by the Deportation Data Project found that the number of detained babies was ten times higher than in former President Joe Biden’s last year in office, when an average of less than three children that age were held nationwide per day.

Many of the children held by ICE over the past year have been kept in custody for time periods far exceeding the twenty-day limit determined by a federal judge in 2015. The report claimed that one hundred and seventy-five babies and toddlers were held in violation of this limit between Trump’s inauguration and this March. No children were held for more than twenty days under Biden.

The main facility where these children are held is the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas, which was closed by Biden and subsequently reopened by Trump.

The report cited a few specific cases of babies being held in ICE custody, noting the horrific results of conditions on the young children. One two-year-old identified as Kaleth, detained with his family in March, stopped eating for almost two weeks, throwing up food, and ceasing to have bowel movements. Another one-year-old named Amir stopped speaking almost entirely and faced his own problems with food.

“According to Amir’s mother, Alsu, employees at Dilley forced her to wean him off formula, claiming he was too old. The solid food options, Alsu insisted, were not appropriate for a 1-year-old,” the report read. “She described being so desperate to get Amir to eat that she sucked a spicy pasta sauce off noodles so she could feed them to her son. She and Azat resorted to hiding cereal from the dining hall at breakfast in their socks and hoods for later, so their child wouldn’t go to sleep hungry.”

Another case involves a one-year-old at Dilley being refused medication other than Tylenol for a fever and lethargy. The child eventually lost consciousness and spent a week in a hospital, where she was diagnosed with COVID-19, an ear infection, pneumonia, bronchitis, and RSV.

ICE and DHS representatives did not comment on the specific cases cited in the story, though in a past social media post, they disputed that the child who was hospitalized did not receive proper medical care. An ICE spokesperson told MS NOW in a statement that the agency “is working rapidly and overtime to remove these aliens from detention centers to their final destination — home.”

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