How ICE operations are leaving children vulnerable to exploitation

Across the United States, tens of thousands of children are living in homes where a parent was there one day—and taken by federal agents the next.

According to new reports by the Brookings Institution^[1] and ProPublica^[2], an estimated 145,000 American children have had a parent detained during the current immigration crackdown. Of those, more than 22,000 live in what researchers call “total loss” households—meaning every adult in the home was arrested at the same time. Widespread protests across the country have demanded their release and numerous reports have revealed horrific conditions in detention centers.

But what happens to the kids left behind?

There is no plan for what comes next

Brookings researcher Tara Watson told PBS:

ICE doesn’t have an obligation to provide for the welfare of those children, as long as someone is taking care of them. The child welfare system also doesn’t have an obligation to get involved unless there’s an accusation of abuse or neglect. So, really, there is no system that is looking out for these kids, making sure the placements they’re in are safe. And I think that’s a problem.

There is no federal database tracking which children lost parents to detention, no welfare checks, no mechanism for knowing whether a child is safe, housed, or still in school. The 145,000 figure comes from researchers piecing together data after the fact. There is no government monitoring system tracking this. The full scale of what’s happening to these kids is largely invisible.

Roughly two-thirds of these children are under fourteen. About one in three is under ten. In the “total loss” households, the majority of children are elementary-school age. What that means on the ground is that older siblings, often teenagers, become the only caregivers available. Some have dropped out of school or abandoned college plans to work full-time. Many are holding households together for younger brothers and sisters who depend entirely on them.

Most of these families won’t reach out for help—because doing so risks exposing them to more enforcement. So they stay quiet. The kids fall out of view. And they are left, often overnight, to figure out how to survive without income, without stability, and without any adult in a position to protect them.

We’ve already seen where this could lead

Here’s what makes this especially alarming: we’ve lived through a version of this story before.

Just a few years ago, investigations—including a landmark series by The New York Times—documented what happened when large numbers of unaccompanied migrant children entered the country without adult guardians. They needed work. They needed money. And a labor market with few scruples was ready and waiting.

Children as young as twelve were cleaning slaughterhouse kill floors with industrial chemicals. Others were running heavy machinery in food-processing plants, working overnight shifts in metal stamping factories, or packaging roofing materials in warehouses.

Federal inspectors found minors in violation of child labor laws in state after state, industry after industry. The pattern was consistent: children without financial safety nets, adults who could intervene, or any institutional protection—those were the children labor brokers targeted. They were cheap. They were desperate. And they were unlikely to complain.

The latest reports are telling us that the surge in immigration sweeps are manufacturing those exact conditions again. Except now for children who are American citizens.

And states are making it worse

While federal enforcement is pushing more children into vulnerability, several states are simultaneously tearing down protections for minors.

Nebraska has introduced lower minimum wages specifically for younger teens—making them cheaper to hire than adults. Indiana has eliminated the system it used to track where minors were employed, wiping out one of the most basic oversight tools on the books. West Virginia has rolled back supervision requirements and opened access to hazardous jobs that were previously off-limits to anyone under eighteen.

Together with federal enforcement policy, they are reshaping the landscape in a very specific direction: more desperate children, fewer protections standing between them and exploitative work.

Kids deserve better than this

Children deserve better. They didn’t make any of the decisions that led to this moment. They are scared and often very young. And right now, no government agency is responsible for making sure they’re safe.

Stopping the state-level rollbacks won’t fix any of this on its own—but it’s one thing that can be done. Join us in calling for states to stop the rollback of labor protections for children.

[1] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-administration-has-detained-400000-immigrants-what-do-we-know-about-their-children/

[2] https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-family-deportations-ice-citizen-kids