How many children have been detained in family facilities each year since 2018 and what are the reliable data sources?
Executive summary
Reliable public counts of children held in U.S. family detention facilities since 2018 do not exist as a neat year-by-year series; available data must be stitched together from HHS/ORR custody numbers, DHS/ICE detention and booking records, Congressional and GAO capacity reports, and investigative journalism, all of which measure different populations (unaccompanied children, children in family units, children “booked” by ICE, and bed capacity) and therefore produce different totals and trends [1] [2] [3] [4]. The clearest pattern: very large numbers of children were in government custody around 2018–2019, family detention capacity peaked in 2018, the formal ICE practice of detaining families largely ceased by December 2021, and reporting shows a measurable restart and renewed bookings of minors into family detention in 2025 [1] [3] [2] [4].
1. The definitional problem: different agencies count different cohorts
Official tallies diverge because the Office of Refugee Resettlement (HHS/ORR) reports on children in HHS custody—principally unaccompanied minors—while ICE and CBP report on family units, bookings, or daily detainee counts; GAO and facility-capacity reports describe beds rather than unique children, and investigative outlets sometimes aggregate encounters across multiple agencies, producing larger totals [1] [2] [3] [5]. Any year-by-year statement about “children detained in family facilities” therefore requires deciding whether to count only children held with parents in Family Residential Centers (FRCs), children in HHS shelters, or all children processed into government custody—choices that change the numbers substantially [2] [1] [3].
2. 2018 and 2019: the surge and the records—thousands to tens of thousands
The notable surge in 2018 produced large counts: HHS reported 10,773 unaccompanied children in its custody in May 2018, reflecting the strain on ORR shelters that year [1], while family-detention capacity and use also spiked—Dilley and Karnes together and other sites gave the system the capacity to hold thousands of family members daily and ICE-era reporting cited tens of thousands in detention-related figures around 2018 [3] [5]. Academic and public-health reviews placed very large child counts through 2018–2019—one review cites 63,624 unaccompanied children detained between October 2018 and June 2019, and AP/Frontline reporting estimated nearly 70,000 children passed through U.S. government detention facilities over 2019—underscoring how many children interacted with the system even if not all were held in family residential centers [6] [7].
3. 2020–2021: contraction and pause in family detention
ICE documentation says it stopped housing families entirely by December 2021 after repurposing family residential center capacity for single adults, a formal pause in the use of family detention beds that corresponds with major declines in the numbers of children being physically held by CBP and other agencies during the early Biden period [2] [8]. Advocates’ summaries and GAO/contract records show contracts and bed capacity remained on the books even when families were not being housed, complicating headline claims that family detention “ended” entirely [3] [9].
4. 2024–2025: partial restart and renewed bookings
Investigative reporting and litigation filings document a renewed use of family detention under the 2025 administration: The Guardian reported ICE “booked about 3,800 minors into immigrant family detention from January to October 2025” based on Deportation Data Project records, and the Marshall Project found hundreds to more than a thousand children held beyond short-release benchmarks in 2025 court filings—evidence that family detention operationally resumed in measurable numbers that year [4] [10].
5. What to use as reliable sources and why
For rigorous year-by-year work, primary sources are HHS/ORR custody reports (for unaccompanied minors), ICE detention-management pages and ERO/booking data (for family-unit bookings and facility use), DHS/CBP Southwest border migration statistics (for apprehensions and processing totals), GAO and DOJ court filings (for bed capacity and contractual status), and investigative datasets from reputable outlets (AP, Frontline, Marshall Project, Guardian) that compile cross-agency records—each must be used with care because they quantify different populations [1] [2] [6] [3] [4] [10]. NGO syntheses (American Immigration Council, ACLU, Detention Watch Network) provide context and legal framing but sometimes mix numbers from different sources; treat them as interpretive, not raw, data [5] [11] [12] [9].
6. Bottom line and limits of available reporting
It is not possible from the cited reporting to produce a single definitive annual count of children detained specifically in family residential centers for each year from 2018 through 2025 because public datasets are fragmented by agency, by cohort (unaccompanied vs. family), and by metric (daily population, bookings, unique individuals, bed capacity); instead, a careful researcher should combine HHS/ORR custody snapshots, ICE/ERO booking and detention-management records, DHS/CBP migration statistics, GAO capacity reports, and investigative compilations to construct year-by-year tallies while documenting assumptions—these are the most reliable sources for that task (p1_s4, [2], [6], [3], p1_s