ICE is supposed to deport and work against people who are illegally in our country, not innocent mothers and fathers who are just trying to take care of their children.
Executive summary
ICE’s statutory role is to enforce immigration laws — including detaining and removing people without lawful status — but its policies and practices are supposed to protect children and accommodate parental interests; nevertheless, reporting and litigation show repeated breakdowns between policy and practice that have resulted in U.S. citizen children being taken across borders with their parents or left displaced in the United States [1] [2] [3]. Recent cases, advocacy reports and official denials paint a contested picture: ICE and DHS say they do not deport U.S. citizens and that parents can choose to leave with their children or arrange guardianship, while civil-rights groups and courts say ICE has sometimes ignored its own directives and due-process protections [4] [5] [3] [6].
1. ICE’s mission and formal safeguards for children
Statutorily, ICE’s mission is interior immigration enforcement, which includes arrest, detention and removal of people without legal status — but ICE has issued directives intended to protect parental interests, such as the 2013 Parental Interests Directive and later detained-parents guidance that instruct agents to generally accommodate efforts to arrange childcare and to keep parents geographically close when possible [2] [7]. Those written procedures oblige officers to document a parent’s choice about a child’s care and to allow parents to participate in guardianship or child‑welfare proceedings, reflecting a formal attempt to avoid unnecessary disruption to parental rights [2] [7].
2. What happened on the ground: cases that contradict the policy
Despite those directives, multiple reports and lawsuits allege that ICE has in practice deported or removed families in ways that curtailed parents’ ability to arrange for caretakers or lawyers — including instances where U.S. citizen children were deported along with parents or where parents say they were held “incommunicado” before removal, prompting ACLU and other civil‑rights objections and litigation [3] [5] [8]. News outlets and advocacy groups documented deportations of U.S. citizen children in Louisiana and Texas that critics contend violated ICE’s own guidance and deprived parents of meaningful process [5] [9] [3].
3. The government’s rebuttal and competing narratives
DHS and ICE officials have publicly denied that the agencies deport U.S. citizens and assert that parents are offered choices — to depart with their children or to designate a safe caregiver and have ICE document that choice — and that children presented with valid passports were not removed against their citizenship status [4] [10]. Administration officials and some DHS statements frame these actions as keeping families together or reflecting parental decisions, while critics say those explanations mask failures to follow policy and to inform parents of alternatives [5] [4] [3].
4. Broader impacts and systemic pressures
Independent analyses warn that intensified interior enforcement and resource reallocation toward mass deportations shift law‑enforcement priorities and strain child‑welfare systems; Brookings and other analysts estimate millions of U.S. citizen children live with at least one undocumented household member and that removals can cause caretaking disruptions, economic loss and educational harms — a structural effect that policy directives alone cannot eliminate [7] [2]. Reporting also shows political incentives at the department level — public messaging that celebrates arrests and a stated administration focus on broader removals — which critics say can produce operational pressure to prioritize deportations over individualized safeguards [11] [12].
5. Bottom line: law, policy, practice and accountability
Legally, ICE has no authority to deport a U.S. citizen, and its written directives require accommodation for parents and documentation of caregiving decisions, but documented incidents, civil suits and media investigations demonstrate that practice has diverged from policy in consequential cases, producing family separations, contested removals and lawsuits alleging due‑process violations; resolving the gap requires transparent investigations, stronger compliance mechanisms and independent oversight to ensure parental protections are actually enforced [4] [2] [3] [6]. Alternative interpretations exist: the government points to parental choice and record evidence in some cases, while advocates point to secrecy, rushed removals and insufficient coordination — both narratives are supported by contemporaneous reporting and legal filings [4] [3] [8].