This practice alert breaks down USCIS’s April 2026 memo terminating automatic deferred action consideration for Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS) petitioners, with guidance on how the change affects petitions filed before and after the May 10 effective date.
This practice guide equips service providers with trauma-informed, child-centered strategies — grounded in the CARE framework — to support children and youth experiencing prolonged detention in ORR custody and beyond.
The Emmy-winning 2019 documentary Kids Caught in the Crackdown, which investigated the historic surge in migrant children detained under Trump’s first term and its lasting psychological toll, is now free to stream on YouTube for the first time.
A newly filed class-action lawsuit accuses Washington state’s child welfare system of failing to protect immigrant youth in its custody by neglecting their immigration-related legal needs, leaving them vulnerable to deportation and unable to access public benefits.
Federal data shows an increase in children entering foster care due to parental detention or deportation from 156 to 232 cases between fiscal years 2024 and 2025. The figures, drawn from only 34 states, are considered an undercount of the family separation occuring under Trump’s mass deportation campaign.
This analysis found that during the first seven months of Trump’s second term, the administration arrested the parents of at least 27,000 children, doubling Biden-era deportation rates and sparking what advocates call an unprecedented family separation crisis.
Under the Trump administration’s stricter vetting procedures, the average stay for unaccompanied migrant children in government shelters has ballooned from 30 days to roughly 200 days.
This analysis estimates that more than 145,000 U.S. citizen children have likely experienced a parent detained by ICE since January 2025, with tens of thousands more affected by deportation.
Nearly half a million immigrants have been detained since Trump’s second term began, but the fate of the U.S. citizen children they leave behind remains largely unknown.
Over 800,000 U.S. citizen children in Texas have an undocumented parent, and Trump’s immigration enforcement is fracturing those families.
© 2026 CICW.