When your parents get detained by DHS
 May 19, 2026 Greetings, Meteor readers, You know how you think in your mind something is a great idea, and then the longer you ponder, the less great it sounds? Anyways, I signed up for a 36-mile group hike. It’s giving mid-life crisis, but at least I get to see some trees.  In today’s newsletter, we look at the staggering number of children who have been abandoned after their parents were detained by ICE. Plus, the woman who was forced to give birth in a New York courthouse. Training mode, Shannon Melero  WHAT’S GOING ONThe forgotten children: In February, ProPublica spoke to a group of children who had been detained in Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas. Those children, some as young as two years old, were detained with their parents. Many of them pleaded to be rescued. The response was sizable: Protests were held outside of Dilley with demands from locals, mom groups, and even Ms. Rachel to release the children from detention. Some have been released while others face an uphill legal battle. Because of the publicity surrounding Dilley, we know some of these children’s names. They are real to the public; their faces give the average person something to fight for. But what about the children we don’t see? The ones who are left at home, but without their caregivers? “We know surprisingly little about what happens to children of detainees,” a new report from the Brookings Institute states. Relying on “demographic characteristics of detainees matched with likely unauthorized immigrants in the American Community Survey,” the organization estimates that since the beginning of the second Trump administration, 205,000 children have been impacted by parental detention, meaning one or both parents living in the household with them have been detained. Roughly 145,000 of those children are U.S. citizens, and nearly a third are under the age of six. In the most extreme cases, 22,000 children who are citizens of this country have been left with no parents because both parents have been detained. (Brookings notes that these numbers are not exact due to limits on available data from the Department of Homeland Security, but says they are a very close estimate.)  PROTESTORS ON THEIR WAY TO THE SOUTH TEXAS FAMILY RESIDENTIAL CENTER IN JANUARY AFTER THE ATTEMPTED DEPORTATION OF LIAM CONEJO RAMOS AND HIS FAMILY. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) What’s more, little is being done—at least by the federal government—to help. “No government entity is responsible for [the children’s] well-being,” Brookings states. And there is “no systematic approach to protecting the children of those detained by ICE.” All in all, we’re talking about more than 200,000 children left without one or both of their parents. That’s equivalent to the entire population of cities like Little Rock, Arkansas or Grand Rapids, Michigan. It’s more than 60 times the population of the entire city of Dilley, Texas. Imagine an entire city, traumatized. That is how many kids we’re talking about. And the government, it seems, wants more. Brookings estimates that if the administration continues moving towards its goal of removing every unauthorized immigrant from the U.S., 2.5 million children will be affected. The report calls for, at the bare minimum, DHS to collect and report accurate data on these children. But what is needed more than that is an end to the unjust immigration policies that leave them parentless to begin with. The midterms are 24 weeks away. The people we vote in will control how much funding DHS gets. Every candidate should be asked about what they are doing about the tens of thousands of kids whom our government has abandoned, and about the 2.5 million more who are at risk. AND:
 AN ICONIC STOLE FOR AN ICONIC GRADUATE. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)
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