What are federal policies governing detention of children when a parent is arrested by ICE?
Executive summary
Federal policy since mid‑2025 requires ICE to account for parental interests when arresting or detaining parents—allowing detained parents to identify caretakers, seeking to keep families together where practicable, and prohibiting certain transfers while parents participate in family‑court or child‑welfare proceedings—but legal limits and longstanding court orders (notably the Flores settlement) constrain how long children can lawfully be held and under what conditions, and critics say the government has violated those constraints in recent operations [1] [2]. Reporting from Minnesota and Texas shows this policy overlay colliding with aggressive enforcement on the ground, producing rapid family transfers, court fights and allegations that ICE detained children or moved families out of state despite judges’ orders [3] [4] [5].
1. What the new ICE directives say about parents and children
ICE issued Directive 11064.4, the “Detention and Removal of Alien Parents and Legal Guardians of Minor Children,” in July 2025, which instructs officers to avoid unnecessarily infringing parental or guardianship rights, to document parental interests, and to enable detained parents to identify caretakers for their minor children while in custody [1]. The Department of Homeland Security also issued a Detained Parents Directive that affirms detained parents should be able to identify caretakers and states parents in detention cannot be deported if they need to participate in family court, child‑welfare, or guardianship proceedings—measures intended to preserve parental decision‑making despite detention [2] [1]. ICE materials provide a reporting line for “Parental Interests Inquiry” and instruct officers to keep records of steps taken to protect parental rights [1].
2. Flores and the 20‑day limit: a juridical brake on child detention
The Flores settlement, a court‑mandated agreement, prohibits holding children in immigration detention facilities for more than 20 days, and lawyers and advocates cited Flores in questioning the legality of prolonged child detention during recent enforcement actions; advocates say Flores has been violated “left and right,” with some children held for months in apparent contravention of the agreement [2]. That legal framework means ICE must generally move children out of detention into licensed settings or release them to sponsors within the Flores time frame, even as agency directives try to balance enforcement goals with parental rights [2].
3. How policy meets practice: transfers, family detention and legal fights
Despite the directives, reporting documents rapid transfers of parents and children from states like Minnesota to family detention centers in Texas—families taken to facilities such as Dilley or San Antonio—prompting lawyers and judges to demand returns and emergency relief; in at least one case a federal judge ordered a child released by a set time but the government moved the family out of state anyway, triggering new court challenges [3] [4]. ICE and DHS officials say officers do not target children and that children in family detention are being cared for, but school officials, neighbors and civil‑rights groups dispute the agency’s version and say agents refused offers from other adults to take custody at the scene [6] [5] [7].
4. Practical rights and limits for detained parents and their children
Advocacy groups and legal resources explain that detained parents retain rights to make decisions about their minor children and ICE policy says parents should be kept near children and allowed contact while detained, and that ICE should avoid transferring parents away from their children; the National Immigration Law Center and others have distilled these protections into “know‑your‑rights” guidance for parents detained by ICE [8] [1]. At the same time, when a child is classified as an unaccompanied minor or declared in state custody, different procedures apply and the child may be placed under HHS or state child‑welfare supervision, a distinction that has complicated several recent cases [2].
5. The debate and the gaps: enforcement priorities vs. child‑welfare law
The administration frames aggressive sweeps as targeting criminal aliens and restoring order, arguing arrests cannot be suspended because an individual has children, but civil‑liberties lawyers and local officials counter that the tactics risk violating Flores, parental rights and state guardianship procedures and have produced judicial interventions and public outrage—including sworn witness accounts contradicting federal statements about abandonment or appropriate handling of children [9] [5] [3]. Available reporting documents both the written ICE/DHS policies and multiple instances in which families were moved, detained, or litigating release—leaving open questions about whether policy directives are being uniformly followed in practice [1] [4] [2].