POLITICS: Number of children in ICE detention skyrockets under Trump – USSA News

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Mansa Musa:

Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars, I’m your host Mansa Musa. Why is this happening to us? Daily numbers of children in ICE detention jump, six times under the Trump administration. Today we are joined by two esteemed journalists reporting for the Marshall Project, Shannon Heffernan and Anna Flagg, who recently covered the horrifying stories of the rise in child detention under the Trump administration. Welcome to Rattling the Bars.

Shannon Heffernan:

Thank you so much for having us.

Mansa Musa:

All right, so first let’s start with you, Shannon. Introduce yourself to our audience and tell me a little bit about yourself.

Shannon Heffernan:

My name is Shannon Heffernan. I’m a staff writer at the Marshall Project. I’ve covered prisons and jails for over a decade and lately have been focusing on detention, particularly collaborating with Anna to talk about child detention.

Mansa Musa:

Introduce yourself to our audience.

Anna Flagg:

Yeah. Hi, I’m Anna Flagg. I’m a data reporter at the Marshall Project, also covering immigration, criminal justice. Been working with Shannon on family detention and covering these issues of these children in ICE detention.

Mansa Musa:

And our audience be mindful this. A lot of times main media are given a warning, like warning sensitive information is coming out. I’m giving you a warning that what we’re about to talk about is not about adults. We’re talking about children. We’re talking about people, children that go to elementary school. We’re talking about children that’s in kindergarten. We’re talking about children in prenatal care. This is horrifying information. We’re going to start with you, Anna. You did the numbers on the number of children that’s being detained and the fact that they’re being detained by astronomical numbers. Tell our audience how you come about the numbers and what these numbers mean.

Anna Flagg:

Yeah. There’s a group called the Deportation Data Project that has been requesting ICE records of detentions and arrests and a bunch of enforcement actions that they’ve been taking. And they’ve been routinely requesting those and then publishing those online for reporters and the public to see in general. And I think that’s just such a good service. And we’ve been making use of that data a lot. We looked at detentions of everybody since, I think it was the end of 2023. And we kind of measured the number of children that had been detained on a daily basis since then up till the end of the dataset, which is currently at the middle of October 2025. And we found that the number of children in ICE detention had gone up significantly. It had increased sixfold and since Trump took office. So on average today, there are about 170 children in ICE detention.

And you can compare that to previously under the Biden administration when it was about 25. So it’s a huge increase.

Mansa Musa:

These numbers have … And they’re constantly growing?

Anna Flagg:

We’re not sure because the administration has been pretty slow and not very transparent about releasing the information. So what we know, the only things that we know are the information that they release. So

Mansa Musa:

That

Anna Flagg:

Data has not been updated since October of last year. There’s other statistics that show the general population of family detention centers like Dilly. So you can get some information from that because you know that there are a certain number of people in detention in the family facility, and you know that some of those are going to be children, but you don’t know how many of them are children.

Shannon Heffernan:

We do have some indicators though by looking at things like arrest and the number of rests that are happening and the numbers Anna was mentioning, that it is likely that those numbers have grown. Now, again, we won’t know for certain because we have also heard about some releases happening at Dili, families being let out. So hopefully we’ll have a better sense of what that actually looks like in terms of daily numbers soon.

Mansa Musa:

Okay. And since we are on that, that was my next question anyway. Can you describe the conditions at Daily? And they call it the Immigration Processing Center in Texas. And who runs it? Is it private owned and specifically who’s incarcerated there? Is undocumented people being brought from other parts of the country?

Shannon Heffernan:

Yeah. So yes, people are being brought up from all over to Dili. It’s not just people in the Texas area. We’ve seen folks go from Chicago when they were doing the raids there. We’ve seen folks go from Minneapolis when the raids were happening there. In terms of the conditions, we’ve heard a lot of troubling information from people who have been detained inside Dilly. We’ve heard complaints of poor medical care. We’ve heard complaints that the water smells and taste foul. And we’ve heard complaints about food that it’s contaminated with worms and mold, but the type of food they give is not appropriate for children, that children are losing weight because they’re not getting appropriate food. I should say that CoreCivic, and I’ll talk a little bit more about them here shortly. The company that runs it has basically said to us, we’re under multiple levels of oversight.

We treat these families well and referred us to ICE for any further information who has not answered our detailed list of questions. You asked about CoreCivics. I’ll also address that. CoreCivic’s a private company. They’re one of the largest private detention companies in the United States, and they run the Deli Detention Center.

Mansa Musa:

And CoreCivic also in the District of Columbia, they’re building a halfway house for the DC Code Defenders, so they got their hand in all things locking people up. Shannon, talk about the different color uniforms that the children are wearing. What’s the significance of it?

Shannon Heffernan:

Yeah. To be honest with you, I’m not familiar with the particular color of uniforms they use at that facility. I have seen different color systems at other facilities, but I unfortunately am not familiar with the particulars at Dili.

Mansa Musa:

Do you know how much money CoreCivic gave to Trump’s campaign?

Shannon Heffernan:

Yeah, we do know that they did make donations to the Trump campaign, particularly his inaugural fund. I will say that the amounts of money they gave, we don’t really have any indications that this was like a pay for play kind of situation. They are one of the larger organizations, and I could see a lot of other reasons that this partnership might happen just in terms of the infrastructure CoreCivic already had under their belt. But yeah, there’s no doubt that they’re turning quite a bit to private companies to operate the detention of immigrants. This is different than what you see in the criminal justice space where so much of it is done by public institutions.

Mansa Musa:

Right. And in June 26th of 2025, it was reported that there were more than 400 children in ICE detention. Can you give us some background information on that, that number and what’s behind it today?

Anna Flagg:

Yeah. So when we were looking at the numbers of children being held over time, what we saw was when Trump took office at first, it kind of stayed stable and then it started rising, rising, rising, rising. And it got very high around the summer of 2025. That was probably around when it peaked, and that’s when you’re referring to when there were a few days in June when there were more than 400 kids in ICE detention. And then we saw it go down a little bit after that. Then it went up a little bit more. And generally, it has stayed pretty high, relatively high, much higher than it was in the previous months under Biden. So we don’t know much about the particulars of those children who were there at the time that it was at its peak, but we do know that probably over a hundred kids every day are being held in ICE detention and these facilities are not really designed for children to stay there, especially for long periods of time.

Mansa Musa:

Do you have any read on where they’re coming from? I know we acknowledge that they bring them from all over the country, but is it a concentration in a particular part of the country like Chicago, California, or is it just wherever it’s a heavy ice present like in Minneapolis, whether it’s a heavy ice present, they taking children?

Anna Flagg:

I mean, I think one thing that we’re able to see from our data is that there’s a lot more enforcement on the interior of the country now. So a lot of kids are getting picked up that way rather than at the border where they may be attempting to cross or they might be unaccompanied. There’s so much more enforcement on the interior of the country now. That’s why we’re seeing a lot more families and children getting pulled in. And I think that seems to be driven by these quotas for high numbers of deportations that the administration is asking for.

Shannon Heffernan:

And I’ll just add, you mentioned these areas where there’s been high presence from ICE like Chicago and Minneapolis, where they’re doing these sort of big raids or they might rate a whole apartment building like they did in Chicago. And we definitely have heard stories of children being caught up in that, and a lot of that’s been more high profile. But where we’ve also seen a lot of the arrest happening, and I think that this is important to note, is people showing up at their court hearings or their ICE check-ins. People who are literally complying with the rules they’ve been given, and that is the moment at which they are taken with their children to Dili.

Mansa Musa:

Children are actually being detained by ICE for people that’s in compliance with whatever order they’ve been given. So what’s the impact of that in terms of people’s abilities to try to be consistent with the procedure from y’all information? Are people reluctant to come to court?

Shannon Heffernan:

I don’t have data on that, but what I do know is anecdotally, I’ve heard about that from a lot of folks, a lot of fear and some really hard decisions they’re making about, do I show up at this court date? Do I show up and comply? Both choices are feeling really risky to folks right now. And a lot of people I’ve heard anecdotally before going to their hearings or doing things like making plans with their friends and family about like, okay, if this goes bad, here’s what I want to happen to my kids, which is a very tough emotionally, financially decision to make.

Mansa Musa:

Because of this, has the courts turned to virtual in order to prevent children from being taken or from innocent people being rounded up? That’s

Shannon Heffernan:

Not something I am particularly familiar with. I have seen other people who serve children switching to virtual services, whether that be schools or communities trying to support people not having to leave their homes by doing things like laundry pickup or grocery drop off. That doesn’t mean the courts aren’t doing it. It’s just not an area that I’ve seen aren’t familiar with.

Mansa Musa:

And your number crunching and it’s doing the data, what’s the relationship between the number of children being rounded up versus the number of children being detained as a result of coming to court with their parents? Have you been able to make a distinction between the two that in essence, where are most of the children being gathered up?

Anna Flagg:

Yeah, I mean, that’s a really good question and that’s something that’s, I think, a little bit hard to get from the data. I think the main thing that we’re seeing in terms of how the kids are getting brought in is just this increased enforcement in the interior because when there’s more enforcement inside the country as opposed to at the border, you’re targeting families that have lived here for a long time. There are kids and there are aunts and uncles, and it’s kind of a way of bringing in an entire family into the enforcement. And these are people who have lived in the community, they have jobs there, they have friends, they have communities, they go to school. And that’s sort of anecdotally, I think also to Shannon’s point, it’s hard to see this from the data.

Mansa Musa:

Right. And okay, in terms of like you wrote about how long children are being held in detention based on what the courts say, how long they should be held, how’d you come to this conclusion that you say that over a thousand children were held 20 days beyond the court order, unpack that for our audience?

Anna Flagg:

So that is something that is in the data because the data includes the time that the child was booked in and the time that the child was booked out. So you can tell how long they spent in the custody of ICE. And we looked at those lengths of stay and how those changed over time and what they are looking like now under the Trump administration. And what you can see is that … So according to the guidance that is given to ICE, they’re really never supposed to take a child into custody. But when they do take a child into custody, they need to try to get that child out as soon as possible. And then the guidance on children that are not with their families is they should be released within 72 hours. And if children are detained with their families, they need to be released within 20 days.

And so that’s what ICE is supposed to do. They’re supposed to release the kids as soon as possible and not more than 20 days. So what we saw when we looked at how many kids were getting let out after one day, two days, three days, 20 days was actually a big bump around that 20-day mark, which suggests that what ICE is doing is actually holding kids as long as they can under this court settlement as a way of keeping them in detention for a long time. And I think ideally their goal is to deport people straight out of detention. And then in that thousand cases that we saw, kids were actually being held longer than that 20-day limit.

Shannon Heffernan:

Yeah. And some as many as several months, I think is worth noting. Some as many as several months. And you think about those conditions, we’ve heard that the education offerings are very poor. It’s not for many hours a day, it’s not a good match for the child. And so those months are very precious at a young age when you’re talking about a developing mind. And what we know from research is it can have long-term effects on a child’s emotional wellbeing, on their education, and on their physical health.

Mansa Musa:

Because we know that ICE is not in the business of childcare. We know they primarily in the business of rounding adults up. The children, for lack of better word, is collateral damage as it relates to what they’re doing. I think that the bigger picture here is that because they not in the business of childcare, they don’t have no mechanism for what to do with the children. Once they get them, they not going to put them in foster care in the United States and give them that type of environment where, to your point, Shannon, there will be an environment where it’d be more conducive to them at least being stable. They’re going to leave them in a detention environment like what they do in prison is like warehousing. I

Shannon Heffernan:

Will say there are some children who are, we don’t know how many, this is a number Anna and I would love to get out at. There are some children who are ending up in the foster care system.

So you can imagine this choice as a parent to the degree they have a choice they don’t always. “Do I take with my child with me in detention and try to ensure that we stay together if I am deported? Do I allow them to stay with a family member or go into the foster care system so they’re not detained, but risk we may be separated?” I mean, I think that’s a very difficult choice that families are wrestling with and the lawyers and advocates I speak to don’t feel like either of those situations are really keeping the children safe.

Mansa Musa:

Has a lawsuit been filed about the way they’re doing this, mainly with the children?

Shannon Heffernan:

So there’s an ongoing legal settlement called Flores that was decided decades ago, and it basically provides guidance for what’s supposed to happen. This was a lawsuit that was filed on behalf of a child that was detained. It’s important to note that the Trump administration is not the only administration that has detained children. This

Mansa Musa:

Has

Shannon Heffernan:

Been a practice that has happened before despite us now seeing a spike. And that settlement, to go back to it, is supposed to provide guidance on what kinds of treatment children are supposed to get. That’s where that 20-day limit comes from.

Mansa Musa:

But

Shannon Heffernan:

The Trump administration, like previous administrations, is trying to say that they should not be under the settlement anymore. They’re trying to get out from that legal guidance so that they’re able to operate without the guardrails of the Florida settlement offers.

Mansa Musa:

So it’s already been established that they can’t keep them longer than 20 days, but the Trump administration is ignoring that?

Shannon Heffernan:

Yeah. So that 20-day limit, it’s a little confusing because it’s not necessarily a hard line on either side of it. It’s a guidance. But yeah, I think that there’s … If you look at the court filings, the people on the Florida side representing the children have again and again and again, said the government is not complying with the settlement in multiple ways, including that 20-day limit.

Mansa Musa:

And talk about Operation Midway Blitz and how did it impact the children?

Shannon Heffernan:

Yeah. So I live in Chicago, which is where Operation Midway Blitz happened. This was the government’s name for sending multiple federal agents to the city of Chicago to detain immigrants. And that is certainly wind it down. There’s not as many agents here as there used to be. They’ve been sending them to places like Minneapolis where they’ve also gotten word that that will be winding down. That does not mean that immigration enforcement is not happening here still. It does still happen here, but it’s not quite at the level it was happening before, but they could ramp it up again. I think that’s one of the things where people are kind of closely watching where and if there’ll be another surge and what city that will be. We do know that children were detained as part of Operation Midway Surge, I’m sorry, Operation Midway Blitz, and also with the ramp up of ICE enforcement in Minneapolis.

So these surges we do definitely see affect children. And I should say it’s not just the children who are detained that we see being affected. You think about school districts like we’ve seen in Minneapolis where multiple children are detained from that district. That has a collateral effect on their fellow students who are witnessing that, on siblings who might

Mansa Musa:

Be

Shannon Heffernan:

Left behind, on neighborhood kids who see that. I think as a child, if you witness something like that or you’re aware of something like that, it’s likely to have a psychological effect on you. So there’s a ripple effect beyond the individuals that are just detained.

Mansa Musa:

As you were saying, I was thinking about on a societal level, how this impact the psychic of the whole nation. This is coming into this country, into the psyche of our children there when they hear ICE is in the area and it’s all because under the pretense that campaign promise that Trump made was that he getting worse to the worst, that the worst of the worst, immigrants, undocumented people come into this country, commit all the crime in the world, therefore I got to get rid of them and then turn around and put a quote out how many people you want to round it up a day. So the people you rounding up is people that are here. The only crime they committed is, if it’s a crime, they not documented and you interfere with their ability to become documented. But talk about, both of y’all can weigh in on this here, and this is just from y’all viewpoint, the families in the detention, outside advocate.

How do y’all see the outside advocacy? Because when Ramos, the little boy, everybody got … When we seen that, and that shocked the consciousness of the nation say everybody that had an issue with whatever was going on, they in their mind couldn’t phantom a child with a hoodie on, an innocent child being taken by ICE. How do y’all see the advocacy and the protests against that? And do you see this taking shape throughout the country as this thing unfolds? Yeah.

Shannon Heffernan:

I mean, I think we’ve definitely seen a surge of interest since that picture was taken of Liam Ramos. We were reporting on this before, and then we were reporting after that image, and we’ve definitely seen a difference in the type of attention that it got. I think what’s really important to note is there are many, many children like him.

Mansa Musa:

He

Shannon Heffernan:

Happened to be the one that was caught in a compelling photograph. And I think that’s important to note in part because these detention facilities are closed places that the public can’t freely go. You’re not going to get a generally news photographer in there or cell phone footage for someone. And because it becomes that kind of black box, I think it’s something that can sometimes, we’re seeing a moment of interest right now, but sometimes be harder to get interest in because you don’t have those images. And so one thing I would really encourage listeners to think about is when you see that image of a child like Liam, remembering how many other children there are like that and remaining engaged even when you don’t have those sort of immediate images, making sure you’re staying informed about things that might be happening to the degree we can be informed in detention in these places where we have less visibility.

Mansa Musa:

Anne?

Anna Flagg:

Yeah. I think that story about Liam really showed how much the American public does care about children and how children are being treated and the idea of an immigrant child that young being taken into detention. And so it’s exactly like Shannon said, I think it’s incumbent on us to understand how many other kids like that are also experiencing the same thing and not forget that because I think the public made it clear that they do care about this issue.

Mansa Musa:

We talked about this, but is there any litigation currently in existence to try to get some kind of ruling on the tension of children?

Shannon Heffernan:

Well, you have the ongoing floor settlement. You also have people filing their own petitions. You’ve seen this reported in the media. There’s been a huge rise in the number of people filing petitions to get released saying that their detention is unfair. So you’re seeing a lot of legal activity around this right now, and in many cases actually saying the courts be favorable to the family. So I think that’s one thing we’ll be really watching and tracking closely is how that continues, what happens if some of this stuff possibly makes its way up into higher courts. Yeah, that’s definitely something we’ll be watching very, very closely.

Mansa Musa:

And as we close, Anna, you got any last words that you want to say something?

Anna Flagg:

No, I would just say that this is an issue that I think … Well, I think that just to repeat myself from before, I think Americans really do care about it and as much division as there is about immigration policy and how it should be enforced, I think the issue of children being detained and experiencing any kind of immigration enforcement actions is something that Americans really care about and can agree. So I think that’s a place to start when we’re trying to find some sort of agreement.

Mansa Musa:

And if our audience want to follow your work, how do they do that?

Anna Flagg:

You can go to the Marshall Project and both of us are listed there.

Shannon Heffernan:

And we would love to hear from listeners about what they’re seeing on the ground. This is an issue we’re continuing to watch. So if you’re in one of these communities being affected, please always feel free to reach out to us about what questions you have and what information you’d like to see revealed, as well as any tips you have for things that you think need to be covered by the media.

Mansa Musa:

In regard to the conditions of the children, do you think that, and we seen like when Liam Ramos was handcuffed, do you think that in order for it to really shake the nation’s conscious to earthquake proportion, that if one of these children happened to die in custody, or do y’all know, have any of them died in custody?

Shannon Heffernan:

I am not aware of any children that have died in immigration custody. I know that is a major fear that a lot of the advocates and lawyers have with the quality of medical care they say they’re seeing inside the facility. My hope would be, and I don’t think this is a political message, I don’t think anybody wants to see a child die. And my hope would be that that is not necessary in order for something to get attention and care.

Mansa Musa:

And we want to remind our audience that as I open up, we’re talking about children and regardless of what we think children are innocent and oftentimes adults impose their will on children and take their innocence from. But these children that we’re talking about, their innocence is being taken from them by virtue of them not being documented in a country that has a statue of liberty in coming into the country saying, “Welcome with open arms.” But when they get here, they’re not being welcomed with open arms, they’re being welcomed with the presence of ICE agents. They’re being traumatized. We ask that you really look at this and ask yourself, when you look at your child as you put in the bed at night, how would you feel if somebody knocked on your door and just say, “I’m going to leave you where you at, but I want to take your child.” You would be horrified.

That’s what the parents are going through of these children. But more importantly, the impact that this particular repression is having on these children is traumatizing these children forever and it’s traumatizing the society norms forever. We ask that you continue to evaluate this information and give us your comments on what you think. We thank Shannon and Anna, we thank you for coming on today, and we really greatly appreciate you taking time out to educate our audience on the importance of understanding this particular story.

Shannon Heffernan:

Thank you so much for having us. We appreciate your

Mansa Musa:

Time. Thank you. And we ask that you continue to support the real news and rattling the bars, because guess what? We actually, the real news.