ICE’s New Policies and What They Mean for Children
Author: Hannah
February 25, 2026
Introduction
Violent arrests and raids conducted by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency have been growing for months now. In 2025, thirty-two people died in ICE custody, making it the deadliest year recorded since the early 2000s (Bustillo & Mukherjee 2025). Reviewed figures by The Guardian also show that there have been about 73,000 people currently in detention, similarly making the arrests and detention rates the highest level ever recorded by the agency. However, Congress itself has stated that according to ICE’s data, immigrants with no criminal record currently make up the largest group in US immigration detention, surpassing the number of those charged with crimes (Olivares and Craft, 2025). Additionally, findings reveal that about 40% of those arrested only had civil immigration violations and weren’t charged or convicted of any other offenses, less than 1% were accused or convicted of homicide, and less than 2% were accused or convicted of sexual assault (Dorn, 2026). This makes it apparent that dangerous criminals do not make up the majority of detainees.
Figure 1
Pie chart of ICE arrests from Jan 2025- Jan 2026, split by arrest type.
It raises a question as to how such numbers have increased within one year. After all, ICE has been established since 2003; however, the crackdown on “illegal aliens” by the Trump Administration has come with many changes in U.S. policies. Since 2025, the federal government and the Supreme Court have passed laws that allow more exceptions and leeways to be given to ICE officers, both in their acts and ability to exert authority. But within these policy changes comes an important question of whether or not they cross a line with our Constitution and rights, not just for immigrants, but for all people living in America.
Think About This
If less than 1% of ICE detainees are accused of homicide and less than 2% of sexual assault, who do you think the enforcement is actually targeting? Does this match the stated goal of removing “dangerous criminals”?
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Breach of Fourth Amendment
In late January, a memo obtained by The Associated Press revealed that the acting director of ICE, Todd Lyons, and dated May 12, 2025, says that ICE officers can forcibly enter homes and arrest immigrants using just a signed administrative warrant if they have a final order of removal issued by an immigration judge, the Board of Immigration Appeals or a district judge or magistrate judge (Santana, 2026). These are documents that ICE personnel sign themselves without any judge reviewing them, and the same agency that wants to conduct the arrest also approves it (GovFacts, 2026). If the same agency that conducts arrests is also the one approving it, then that is a clear imbalance of power given to ICE, as they are allowed to enter as many homes as they want for whatever reason they deem “necessary.” This becomes a contradiction against the Fourth Amendment, which protects against arbitrary arrests without a judicial warrant. However, the DHS backs up ICE by stating that “Under federal immigration law, officers may issue an administrative warrant, which means that the probable-cause finding is made by an executive-branch officer rather than a judicial officer. This is consistent with broad judicial recognition that illegal aliens aren’t entitled to the same Fourth Amendment protections as U.S. citizens” (Department of Homeland Security, 2025).
Think About This
If judicial oversight is removed from the warrant process, what practical limits remain on the government’s ability to define “reasonable” searches and entry?
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Breach of the Fifth, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendments
If “illegal aliens” aren’t entitled to the Fourth Amendment as DHS claims, then this raises a larger issue of the entitlement to the Fifth, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendments, which guarantee due process and counsel. The Atlantic reported that a low-level immigration officer can order deportation after a single interview by determining that a person lacks proper documents and cannot prove two years of continuous presence in the United States (Leong, 2026). Supreme Court cases like Egbert v. Boule (2022) also limit the ability of individuals to sue federal immigration officers for damages after unlawful searches, detentions, or the use of excessive force (Leong, 2026). So not only does ICE have the power to search, arrest, and deport anyone whom they suspect to be an undocumented immigrant, but they essentially receive little to no consequences for any unlawful actions they commit on innocent people, regardless of their citizenship status.
With all this protection for the ICE officers, what about protection for the people themselves? That was what the Fifth, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendments were for in exact situations such as these. But if “illegal aliens” are being detained and deported without any due process, if they are being denied their right to challenge ICE’s determination of what one’s citizenship status is, then this implies the inability to prove one’s citizenship in the U.S. If nobody arrested by ICE is given due process, the government cannot efficiently prove who is or isn’t an illegal immigrant. ICE and the DHS are also completely ignoring the concern of accidentally or wrongfully detaining and deporting those who turn out to be citizens, legal immigrants, and all other lawful statuses. As for the people who were wrongfully detained, they cannot expect to return to their lives in the U.S., because none of the immigration law enforcement will give them due process, much less receive any justice or compensation for the harm ICE has caused them, based on a crime they did not commit.
Racial Profiling and Refusing to Identify
In September 2025, the Supreme Court allowed ICE to stop people because of their race, the language that they speak, the way they dress, the location they are in, or the line of work they are in, pausing a lower court ruling that had barred such actions (Wang, 2026). The Supreme Court had also allowed ICE agents in Los Angeles to use race and other profiling factors in deciding who to stop and potentially detain (Detrow et al., 2025). Racial profiling is historically rooted in racism, and it is discriminatory by nature. The act of racial profiling by law enforcement is generally prohibited due to the Fourteenth Amendment, which grants equal protection and prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. However, the Supreme Court’s exception for ICE officers contradicts the equal protection clause; it justifies the use of discrimination, which can potentially harm hundreds of thousands of innocent citizens and legal immigrants simply due to their appearance.
There have also been multiple cases of ICE personnel refusing to identify themselves by wearing masks, using unmarked vehicles, and switching license plates (Anderson, 2026). These actions appear to be aimed at avoiding detection, creating the appearance of guilt. While the DHS claims that this is all due to preventing the doxxing of their agents (Department of Homeland Security, 2025), Reporter Jasmine Garsd explains that “nobody can find the people who are detained by ICE in the system for three or four days” (Detrow et al., 2025). This reveals why the hidden identification of ICE is a grave concern for the safety of the people. If masked people are refusing to give their identities or where they even work, we cannot differentiate between ICE and a group of regular people. By that logic, anyone could pretend to be ICE for the sake of kidnapping and/or harming civilians, and any ICE agents could deny their involvement in whatever action they commit while at work for the sake of avoiding accountability. This is also particularly dangerous, because people are expected to follow through with ICE in a calm manner. Civilians cannot be expected to calmly trust every masked individual who claims to arrest them for being an undocumented immigrant, nor to follow them into their vehicle after refusing to identify themselves in any way. This only incites chaos and panic within people, thus encouraging potential chaos and harm when interacting with ICE officers.
Think About This
If ICE agents can legally stop you based on how you look, dress, or speak, and are not required to identify themselves, how would you personally know the difference between a legitimate federal agent and someone impersonating one?
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Children and ICE
ICE’s new policies are not limited to adults; children are also being severely harmed in the process. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement website has clearly stated that “ICE does not detain unaccompanied children—except in rare instances” (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, n.d.). However, Representative Walkinshaw, during an oversight of the DHS Committee Hearing on Feb. 10, 2026, stated that ICE has currently booked nearly 4000 children, and 1000 of them have been held longer than the court-ordered 20-day limit. Additionally, an analysis of ICE data obtained by the Deportation Data Project showed that over 500 of those detained were under the age of five (Wang, 2026). The U.S. Supreme Court Jurisprudence states that youth are “categorically less culpable” for their misconduct and that youthful offending must not be considered indicative of adult character and behavior (Jacobs et al., 2025). Trump’s administration claims that their crackdown on immigration was to rid America of pedophiles and drug traffickers, yet the detainees consist of families and their children.
As for the natural-born children of those detained and deported by ICE, they are separated from their parents and are forced into the U.S. foster care system, which is known to be overcrowded, underfunded, and often mistreats its children. In a press release from the Department of Justice in 2023, the United States reached a settlement under Ms. L. v. ICE, which set new standards to limit family separation and improve family reunification efforts. However, due to ICE’s recent policies, these efforts are now being blocked. Ultimately, the forced separation of families perpetuates cycles of poverty and systemic inequality by disregarding the protection and opportunity rights guaranteed to U.S. born children (American Immigration Council Staff, 2025).
Even protected areas for children, such as daycares and schools, are now subjects of interest to ICE officers. Although the DHS firmly claims that ICE does not target schools to make arrests of children (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, n.d.), recent news, like five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos detained by ICE agents in Minneapolis while returning from school with his father, says otherwise. There has even been an instance during late December of 2025, when West St. Paul’s elementary schools had more than 50 students who did not return to class. This was due to the fact that ICE agents were specifically targeting school areas, detaining both students and parents as they went to or from school (Shah, 2026). Despite ICE’s denial of targeting protected areas, there still appear to be patterns of ICE using children and their schools to find and arrest their parents, and in some cases, detain the children as well.
Mental and Physical Health Concerns of Children
Above all else, it is highly traumatizing for these children to deal with such events. The children who are detained and deported are ripped away from their lives in America and either forced to stay inside poorly conditioned facilities, or suddenly find themselves in a country they are unfamiliar with. For American-born children whose parents were arrested, they are expected to adjust to the foster care system after suddenly losing their parents and/or guardians without knowing what will happen to them or if they’ll ever see them again. Such separations from their families or lives in America will obviously have severe mental health impacts on these children.
Studies done on the likely impacts of enhanced enforcement activity on the health and well-being of immigrant families show that with the rise of deportation threats, families have increased their fear of leaving their homes, causing higher rates of depression and anxiety among youths. Some families also reported losing health care and other welfare programs due to fears of leaving their homes (Pillai et al., 2025). Thus, without access to basic resources such as food security, utilities, proper housing, and healthcare, their children are at risk of withholding their natural development due to lack of vital necessities. Older children who witnessed the detention and deportation of family members are often forced to assume new responsibilities supporting the remaining family members, adding to the stressors of financial worries and putting their future on hold. Other research shows that exposing children to traumatic events like ICE raids and separation can result in PTSD, which leads to both short and long-term detriments on their physical, mental, and behavioral health (Pillai et al., 2025).
Further research showed that detained children experience poor conditions and negligent care in detention facilities. When analyzing the deaths of immigrants in ICE detention facilities, researchers found that the majority of the deaths occurred among people who were noted to be young and healthy before arriving in these facilities. Studies show high levels of psychiatric distress, including depression and post-traumatic stress, even after short detention periods (Pillai et al., 2025). While conditions vary for each facility, “sexual abuse, overcrowding, denial of medical care, inadequate nutrition, sleep deprivation, restrictions on religious freedom, and solitary confinement have been reported in all of them” (Vidal Valero, 2025). Detainees who are vulnerable to developing chronic medical conditions are more likely to be at risk, and children and adults who already have existing mental health issues will be at risk of suicide and self-harm. It’s particularly dangerous when considering the children with existing health concerns who need certain medications, like insulin, inhalers, medically prescribed pills, etc. It’s unfortunately difficult to accurately know the specific data on these detainees, as researchers have faced constant barriers due to ICE’s underreporting of health emergencies (Dekker et al., 2023). When considering a child being forced to endure the facilities that are comparable to a federal prison, with limited, and sometimes even nonexistent resources, one can only imagine the physical and mental toll they are burdened with.
Think About This
If ICE agents can legally stop you based on how you look, dress, or speak, and are not required to identify themselves, how would you personally know the difference between a legitimate federal agent and someone impersonating one?
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Conclusion
With news of ICE’s recent changes in policies, these enactments that provide more power and protection to their agents have come at a deadly cost of children’s health and well-being. With ICE and DHS now including children as targets of interest, officers are using kids to lure in their parents for arrest and detainment. After being seperated from their families, these children, regardless of their immigration status, are either sent to the foster care system, arrested and sent to detention facilities, and/or forcibly deported to another country. The same system that stripped them of their life is also actively putting their mental and physical health at risk by putting them in situations of high stress and trauma, and denying them proper developmental care. All of this is done under the guise of legality, and the “belief” that the federal government is within the rights of the Constitution.
Furthermore, because of these new policies, children and their families who are being targeted by ICE are allowed to be racially profiled, yet are not allowed to question the authorities of ICE and cannot be protected under the Fourth Amendment. Even if under any lawful status of residing in the U.S., Detained families cannot sufficiently fight for their rights or equal protections. They are consistently denied access to counsel, due process, or any trial that challenges ICE because these rights are “not applicable to illegal aliens”. Essentially, with no way to prove one’s innocence, the status of citizenship can no longer be defined by anyone except for ICE and the DHS, and who they deem to be undocumented can be based solely on attributes, from the color of their skin to their accents.
Again, Trump’s Administration, the federal government, the Supreme Court, ICE, DHS, and countless other legislators all claim that the crackdown on immigrants is for the protection of the American people, in order to rid the U.S. of pedophiles, rapists, and drug traffickers. Yet the very citizens they are “protecting” are largely the ones being driven out of their homes. The wrongfully detained and deported families and their children are being scrutinized by the very Constitution that was supposed to protect them, and until the U.S. finally limits the powers of ICE, more children will continue to be at longstanding significant risk.
