The number of kids who were placed in foster care because immigration agents detained or deported their parents increased by nearly 49% in the 2025 fiscal year, according to new data from the federal government.
A dashboard from the Department of Health and Human Services updated last week shows immigration-enforcement-related entries into foster care jumped from 156 in the 2024 fiscal year to 232 last fiscal year.
The data — an undercount, with reported cases from only 34 states — provides more insight into a form of family separation taking place more frequently under President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign. Approximately 6.3 million children in the U.S, most of whom are American citizens, live with at least one parent who is undocumented, according to an October analysis from the Migration Policy Institute.
Sarah Mehta, the deputy director for policy and government affairs for the ACLU’s Equality Division, said the children in these circumstances have to face both the trauma of separation from their parents and adjusting to a strange environment.
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“This rise in children going into the state foster care system is pretty devastating but also entirely predictable when you have the type of aggressive immigration enforcement system that we’ve seen over the last year,” Mehta said.
About 43% of the minors separated from their parents and put into foster care were between 11 and 16 years old, according to the new data. Children between 1 and 5 years old accounted for 22% of cases. NOTUS previously reported that four toddlers from 1 to 3 years old had spent at least three months in foster care in Vermont.
Georgia placed 34 kids of immigrants in foster care, the most of any state. In the 2024 fiscal year, the state reported 10 kids were put into foster care after their parents were detained. Other states also saw increases: New York reported 28 kids entering foster care under those circumstances last year, up from 18 in 2024. Tennessee had the third-highest number, reporting 14 children of immigrants sent to foster care in fiscal year 2025, up from roughly 10 the year before.
Massachusetts, Michigan, Oklahoma and Utah reported 10 cases each. The rest of the 27 states reported fewer than 10 kids going into foster care as a result of their parents’ immigration status.
The cases have also expanded in footprint. In the 2024 fiscal year, only half of U.S. states reported cases of kids being placed into government custody due to immigration enforcement.
There are major reporting gaps in the data: Child welfare agencies in California and Texas, where an estimated 36% of all children with at least one undocumented parent live, don’t report that data.
In the first months of Trump’s second term, immigration arrests of parents with children who were U.S. citizens doubled, forcing families to arrange to leave their kids with friends or volunteer community members, ProPublica reported.
These kids are also spending more time in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the HHS subagency tasked with overseeing children who arrive in the U.S. without a parent or legal guardian. More than 2,100 children have spent nearly 200 days in ORR shelters or foster care on average, according to ORR data last updated in April.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond to a request for comment.
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