How does ICE policy address children present during adult immigration arrests and what is the agency’s official protocol?
Executive summary
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) maintains policy guidance saying it does not routinely detain unaccompanied children and seeks to minimize disruption to parental rights when arresting adults, codified in Detention Management materials and Directive 11064.4 on detained parents [1] [2]. In practice, the agency’s stated protocol allows children to stay with arrested parents at the parent's request or to be taken into custody in limited circumstances, a fact at the center of recent disputes over several Minnesota arrests that exposed gaps between policy, field decisions and public perception [3] [4] [5].
1. What ICE policy formally requires about children and parental rights
ICE’s public guidance emphasizes that it “does not detain unaccompanied children — except in rare instances” and that transfers of unaccompanied children to Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) are governed by federal law and interagency coordination [1]. The agency’s July 2025 Directive 11064.4, “Detention and Removal of Alien Parents and Legal Guardians of Minor Children,” explicitly directs officers to avoid unnecessary infringement on parental or guardianship rights and to consider those interests when planning enforcement actions [2].
2. How the official protocol is supposed to operate during arrests
ICE’s operational framework permits agents to keep a child with an arrested parent if the parent requests that arrangement, and officers are instructed to coordinate with other agencies when a child is effectively unaccompanied and must be transferred to ORR custody [3] [1]. Public reporting shows agency spokespeople portray safety and welfare as primary concerns, with DHS statements saying agents acted to protect children when a parent absconded, and that officers followed the wishes of accompanying adults where possible [6] [5].
3. Where practice, witness accounts and official statements have collided — the Minnesota cases
Recent coverage of multiple detentions of schoolchildren in Columbia Heights, Minnesota, reveals sharp disputes: school officials and a family lawyer say at least four students, including a five‑year‑old, were detained during enforcement operations and describe children being used as “bait” or taken when an adult fled, while DHS and ICE officials insist children were not targeted and that decisions were driven by immediate safety concerns or parental requests [7] [8] [4] [9] [10]. News outlets report conflicting eyewitness accounts about whether other adults offered to care for the child and whether agents refused those offers, a factual gap acknowledged in multiple stories [4] [9] [5].
4. Legal limits, exceptions and emerging data on children in ICE custody
Statutory rules like the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act require unaccompanied children be transferred to HHS ORR custody, and ICE’s materials reiterate that unaccompanied minors should not be housed in ICE facilities except rarely [1]. Yet advocacy groups and some reporting say use of ICE custody for children rose in 2025, with claims that hundreds of children entered ICE custody in circumstances tied to adult arrests or immigration hearings — a trend the AILA Law Journal highlighted as an emergent harm though those figures and contexts are still being documented and debated [11].
5. Accountability, competing narratives and what remains uncertain
Federal messaging emphasizes that recent operations target serious criminal suspects and that child‑protection motives guide on‑the‑ground decisions, a narrative advanced by DHS press statements and enforcement tallies [12] [6]. Advocates, local officials and some journalists counter that tactical choices have exposed children to detention or trauma and that public images of children in enforcement settings intensify scrutiny and mistrust [13] [8]. Key unresolved facts — whether agents refused safe alternatives offered at the scene, how frequently parents requested children stay with them versus ORR transfer, and precise counts and legal bases for the children placed in ICE custody in 2025 — are not fully settled in the current reporting and require agency transparency and case‑level records to resolve [5] [11].
Implications
ICE’s written protocol seeks to limit direct detention of children and to respect parental interests, but recent incidents show a persistent gap between policy text and outcomes in high‑tempo enforcement operations; reconciling safety, legal obligations and community trust will depend on clearer field guidance, better interagency coordination and independent oversight to answer factual disputes documented in media accounts [2] [1] [4].