Children in U.S. Detention
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- 7 min read
What are family detention centers?
Family detention centers are holding facilities for children or entire families who have been either arrested or detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) while awaiting asylum or immigration proceedings. People may be arrested at the border or while living anywhere within the U.S. and taken to a facility until immigration law enforcement or court proceedings determine next steps.
As of September 2026, two privately contracted centers operate and house children in the U.S. Both are in Texas. The largest, South Texas Family Residential Center, or “Dilley,” is managed by CoreCivic and has 2,400 beds. The Karnes County Immigration Processing Center, or “Karnes,” is managed by Geo Group and has 800 beds.
As immigration-related arrests have increased exponentially in 2025 and 2026, so has the number of children in detention centers. From January 2025 to April 2026, more than 6,200 minors have been held in detention — 10 times the number during the previous presidential administration.
The issue of holding migrant children is as old as the first immigrant detention center on Ellis Island in 1892. But not until a class action lawsuit was decided in 1997 did the U.S. provide legal protections for children in detention centers. Presidential administrations from both major political parties have been criticized for mismanaging migrant children. The current Republican Trump administration supports detaining minors. In 2014, the Democratic Obama administration ordered the building of makeshift holding facilities out of chainlink fences to hold an influx of immigrants from Central America. These controversial “cages” held individuals and families, including children, sometimes even past the 72-hour limit set in the Flores Settlement Agreement (see more about the Flores agreement below).
What happens to children in ICE detention centers?
Housing babies and children requires special considerations and accommodations like diapers, education, and pediatric healthcare. Detaining children poses ethical issues due to the question of whether a child’s social, emotional, intellectual, and physical needs can be met while they are incarcerated.
The revised 2020 Family Residential Standards by ICE outline requirements for healthcare, classroom education, three meals and snacks every day, and more for confined children. Despite these standards, news sources have reported that children in child detention centers lack even basic resources, and that water is limited and food is scarce, moldy, or worm-infested.
The organization Human Rights First conducted a thorough analysis of family residential centers and released a report in April 2026. Interviews with confined families, letters and pictures from the children, and testimony in court cases revealed “inhumane conditions” inside facilities. Children reported experiencing issues with overcrowding and lack of adequate food, water, clothing, and healthcare. Families described undergoing regular threats of separation and deportation as well as verbal and physical abuse inflicted by the staff.
The American Academy of Pediatrics cites findings about the present and long-term psychological and emotional impacts of detention on children, including post-traumatic stress disorder, suicidal ideation, and other behavioral issues. Parents report that their detained children suffer from sleep issues, self-harm, regressive development, decreased appetite, and more.
“. . . going to the doctor and that the only thing they tell you is to drink more water and the worst part is that it seems the water is what makes people sick here, wait for the same bad responses from the judges, listen to bad news from those who have no hope left, having to share a room with 3 other families, and all of this so they can send us back to our countries.” — Ender, 12 years old
What happens to children who are U.S. citizens and whose parents are detained or deported?
Although it may be easy to limit discussions of child and family detention as an issue impacting only noncitizens vulnerable to deportation, the impact on U.S. citizen family members must also be considered. More than 16.7 million people live with at least one undocumented individual, and one in ten U.S. citizen children have a noncitizen parent. Depriving a family of the right to remain in the U.S. or together as a family unit can result in long-term emotional and psychological consequences.
Parents facing detention or deportation may choose whether to take their citizen children with them or, in some cases, allow their children to remain in the U.S. with a designated guardian. However, establishing legal guardianship often requires advance planning and appropriate legal documentation. Without the proper arrangements, children may be placed in temporary foster care or in informal care situations without legal protections, potentially creating further instability or risk of danger during an already-traumatic experience.
Also raising serious ethical and humanitarian concerns are the reports of pregnant girls, some as young as 13, being held in facilities not equipped for children, families, or pregnant people, such as the San Benito Processing Center in Texas. Pregnancies among these minors may be considered high-risk because of their ages, and some of the pregnancies are the result of sexual violence or rape. These circumstances make the detention of pregnant minors especially concerning, as these individuals may be navigating pregnancy, childbirth, and trauma while separated from family and placed within detention. Yet, regardless of the circumstances surrounding their birth, children born in the U.S. to people in ICE custody are still U.S. citizens, as guaranteed by birth on U.S. soil under the 14th Amendment.
What is the Flores Settlement Agreement?
What began in 1985 as a class action suit concerning the mistreatment of three migrant girls from Central America resulted in the current agreement meant to protect children in U.S. detention centers. Before the settlement, children could be held in detention centers under any conditions and for any length of time.
The original Flores Settlement Agreement stipulated that children must be released from detention without unnecessary delay, they must be placed in the “least restrictive” setting, and the government must set and adhere to standards of care for children in detention centers. Since then, various points of litigation have resulted in additions to the agreement.
Significant changes to the government’s obligations occurred in 2015 when a California district court ruled that the federal government was violating the Flores agreement. The legal update ordered the following and more:
Three- to five-day maximum to the transition period between custody and placement in a facility equipped for children
20-day limit to a child’s confinement
Required licensure of the facilities
Prioritization of family reunification
However, data shows that since President Trump retook office in January 2025, ICE has detained more than 1,600 children for longer than 20 days. The centers, ICE, and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) appear to be failing the other standards at times, too.
How does the practice of detaining children challenge principles of ethical government?
The issue of detaining and mistreating children of immigrant families crosses the following five principles of Mormon Women for Ethical Government:
1. Special care should be taken to protect the rights of the minority from undue infringement by the majority (Principle of Ethical Government 2b).
As some of the most vulnerable members of society, children need protection. Children of immigrants are children of God who deserve compassion and care. One argument used to justify detaining children in the U.S. is that families have a choice between detention and returning to their country of origin. Setting aside the oversimplification of this argument concerning parents, this is not true for children. No matter the circumstances, minors do not have a choice between detention and deportation.
2. All people are entitled to equal protection and due process under the law and to be free from arbitrary deprivation of their life, liberty, property, and privacy (Principle of Ethical Government 2c).
Even in the best facilities, children in detention are deprived of their rights to liberty and privacy. Evidence points to substandard conditions, and serious concerns about the physical and mental health of minors prove valid.
3. The family is the foundational group unit of society. All families have the right to support and protection under the law (Principle of Ethical Government 2e).
Separating part-citizen families or children from asylum-seeking parents demonstrates a lack of respect for the family as a foundational unit of society. This valuation of the family is at the core of many Americans’ belief systems, and practices that threaten families contest those morals.
4. People have moral responsibilities to provide succor and relief to their fellow human beings fleeing war, violence, persecution, and natural disasters, regardless of their race, nationality, or religion (Principle of Ethical Government 3d).
MWEG recognizes the moral responsibility to provide relief to refugees. Asylum is a protection long offered in the U.S., and detaining children of asylees compounds the troubles of an already-suffering population.
5. When laws are unjust — especially when they violate the human and civil rights of vulnerable or marginalized groups — all citizens have an obligation to work toward reformation of those laws, whether or not they are directly harmed by those unjust laws (Principle of Ethical Government 3g).
The details of the Flores agreement have never been codified into law. This gap leaves detention practices open to interpretation and risks the well-being of children. At the time of publication of this article, the Trump administration is attempting to end the Flores agreement, and the subsequent litigation continues. Meanwhile, children’s advocates persist in calling for the federal government to secure the safety of children with just laws.
This article was written by Sherilyn Stevenson, lead researcher and writer for Mormon Women for Ethical Government, with Nori Gomez and Alexa Alvarado, immigration program specialists for Mormon Women for Ethical Government.
