The Department of Homeland Security admitted to Congress this month that it deported dozens of unauthorized immigrants who are protected under U.S. law because they were brought as children to the United States, according to a letter made public Thursday.

ICE raids have left children without parents and feeling abandoned, separated nursing babies from their mothers, separated pregnant wives from their husbands and compelled local communities and organizations to scramble to address child welfare crises in their wake. In a country that emphasizes the importance of family unity in the socialization and upbringing of its children, an immigration system that promotes family separation is a broken system.

A 15-year-old boy with disabilities was handcuffed outside of a Los Angeles high school in August after federal immigration agents mistakenly identified him as a suspect. The boy was waiting in a car with his mother while his sister registered for classes inside.

Hundreds of immigrant children lingered in federal detention beyond a court-mandated limit, including some who were held more than five months, according to court filings that alarmed legal advocates who say the government is failing to safeguard children.

"I Just Hope I Get My Mom Back," Says 15-Year-Old Juan Martinez, Who Is Now Caring for His Brothers, Ages 8 and 9

ProPublica went inside the immigrant detention center for families in Dilley, Texas. Children held there told us about the anguish of being ripped from their lives in the United States and the fear of what comes next.

The number of children in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention on a given day has skyrocketed, jumping more than sixfold since the start of the second Trump administration. The Marshall Project analyzed data obtained by the Deportation Data Project and found that ICE held around 170 children on an average day under Trump. During the last 16 months of the Biden administration, ICE held around 25 children a day.

Nayra Guzmán knew there was something wrong with her daughter within hours of her birth — a long and complicated delivery that included a diagnosis of preeclampsia and ended in a Cesarean section. In the haze of recovery, the first-time mom noticed her daughter was struggling to breathe. When the baby started turning blue, Guzmán watched as doctors whisked her away to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).

A 5-year-old boy arriving home from preschool in Minnesota was taken by federal agents along with his father to a detention facility in Texas, school officials and the family's lawyer said, making him the fourth student from his Minneapolis suburb to be detained by immigration officers in recent weeks.

A 9-year-old shares her story of being held at the nation’s only operating detention center for immigrant families in Dilley, Texas.

One citizen recalled that federal agents pointed guns at her youngest children, ages 6 and 8, and dragged her 14-year-old daughter out of a pickup and zip-tied her. 

The citizen, Anabel Romero, told investigators that an agent threatened to “fucking blow your head off” during the chaotic raid at a rural Idaho racetrack. Romero also said agents “wouldn’t let people get diapers or food for their kids.”

Parent Tara Goodarzi, who was on her way to drop off her son, told the outlet that everyone was “crying, terrified, huddled together” after what she described as “the abduction”.

“To do it in a place where children are, with complete disregard for what children see, there’s no low these people won’t stoop to,” she added.

A family trying to get home from their son’s basketball game in Minneapolis on Wednesday found themselves between protesters and federal agents, before they were tear gassed in their car and the mother had to administer CPR to her infant.

An Illinois man said his US citizen family – including his one-year-old daughter – were pepper-sprayed in their car by federal immigration agents during a shopping trip in a Chicago suburb.

The elder Gutiérrez reportedly said he overheard Ice agents saying that his son had not been the person they had come to get.

“The officers grabbed him and two other boys right at the entrance to our building. One said: ‘No, he’s not the one,’ like they were looking for someone else. But the other said: ‘Take him anyway,’” he recalled.

Two families — among them three U.S. citizens aged two, four, and seven — were abruptly deported under "troubling circumstances," says the ACLU of Louisiana

Despite being American citizens, three children — a 4-year-old boy with Stage 4 kidney cancer, his 7-year-old sister and a 2-year-old girl — were swept up along with their families by immigration authorities in Louisiana and quickly sent to Honduras, according to a lawsuit filed on behalf of the families.

MPRNews.com | Shortly after Elvis Joel Tipan Echeverria, a man from Ecuador with an open asylum case, pulled into the driveway of his Minneapolis home on Thursday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents broke a window in his car, pulled him and his 2-year-old daughter out and drove them away.