What ICE policies govern the arrest and custody of children during family immigration enforcement actions?
Executive summary
The arrest and custody of children during ICE family enforcement actions are governed by a patchwork of internal ICE directives, federal statutes and settlements, and operational practices that prioritize adult custody determinations while purporting to limit detention of unaccompanied minors to rare cases [1] [2]. Recent revisions to ICE’s Detained Parents Directive, advocacy critiques, and media investigations reveal tension between formal guidance to “accommodate” childcare arrangements and field practices that have led to family separations and allegations of poor conditions for children in custody [3] [4] [5].
1. Legal framework: statutes, Flores and the Homeland Security Act
Federal law and settlement agreements set outer boundaries: the Homeland Security Act assigned care of unaccompanied children away from ICE, and the Flores settlement imposes baseline protections when minors are detained, obligations referenced in reporting about conditions for children in custody [1] [5]. ICE’s authority to arrest and detain people for civil immigration violations does not require proof of a crime, a legal reality emphasized in state guidance and ICE materials that shapes how parents can be taken into custody even when no criminal charge exists [6] [7].
2. ICE internal policy: the Detained Parents Directive and its evolution
ICE guidance for arrests that involve parents is primarily encapsulated in a Detained Parents Directive (DPD) that replaced the earlier Parental Interests Directive; the 2017 DPD removed many specific parental safeguards and instructed agents to “remain cognizant” of impacts on children rather than formally protecting parental rights, and subsequent revisions through 2025–2025 have continued to be the focus of advocacy and agency fact sheets [3] [4] [8]. The DPD tells officers to generally accommodate parents’ efforts to arrange childcare before alerting child-welfare authorities, but the directive’s language and operational discretion mean compliance varies in practice [3].
3. Custody determinations and alternatives to detention
ICE officials say custody decisions are individualized—taking into account criminal history, flight risk, family ties and humanitarian issues—and that alternatives to detention (ATD) exist to keep people in the community when appropriate, with the agency aiming to house detainees near their arrest location when possible [2]. Advocacy groups and legal providers, however, document that prosecutorial discretion guidance was narrowed in 2017 and that parents face high barriers to release, with critics arguing family detention and expanded mandatory detention policies have reduced real-world options for keeping families together [3] [9] [10].
4. Operational practice: arrests, force, and anonymity
ICE’s public materials and FAQ assert agents can make arrests without judicial warrants in many scenarios and state that officers use “reasonable and necessary” force if resisted while taking precautions like masking to prevent doxxing [7]. Investigative reporting and watchdog groups counter that enforcement tactics—including masked, militarized operations and plainclothes arrests—have changed over time and created community alarm and accusations of excessive force and indiscriminate detentions that increase the risk of child separations [11] [12].
5. Conditions and custody of children after arrest
When children are taken into custody or become separated from parents due to ICE enforcement, Flores standards and child-welfare systems are supposed to govern placement and care, but news reports and legal filings allege unsafe or unsanitary conditions for children who end up in ICE-controlled settings and highlight systemic failures in coordination that prolong separation or complicate reunification [5] [13]. Nonprofits and state offices urge awareness of rights and have documented instances where letters or operations pressured children or threatened transfers—illustrating how enforcement policy and communication can exacerbate family trauma [13] [5].
6. Competing narratives, institutional agendas, and accountability
ICE and DHS present directives and statistics that emphasize targeted enforcement of criminal aliens and individualized custody determinations, an institutional framing intended to justify expanded operations and detention capacity [14] [2]. Civil society, legal advocates, and investigative journalists frame policy changes and aggressive tactics as deliberate shifts toward broader detention with reduced discretion for protecting parental and child interests, and they call for congressional and legal checks—an unresolved accountability debate reflected across the sources [12] [10] [11].