How have numbers of detained children by ICE changed since 2016?
Executive summary
Since 2016 reporting and official statistics show a marked rise in children held in immigration-related custody in recent years, driven mainly by renewed family-unit detentions and a dramatic expansion of the overall ICE population in 2024–2026; however, the provided sources do not include a complete, year-by-year breakdown beginning in 2016, so precise numerical change from 2016 to today cannot be fully calculated from these documents alone [1] [2] [3].
1. The baseline and legal guardrails: ICE, HHS/ORR, and rare child detention
Federal law and agency practice distinguish unaccompanied children from those in family custody—ICE says it does not detain unaccompanied children except in rare instances and coordinates transfers of unaccompanied alien children to Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement under the TVPRA [3]; that legal framework means most child detention figures are tied to family-unit policies rather than routine ICE custody of solo minors [3].
2. A sharp uptick in overall ICE population has lifted family detentions too
ICE’s detainee population surged to record highs in 2025–early 2026, with reporting that ICE held about 73,000 people in January 2026 — an 84 percent increase from a year earlier — and that roughly 6,000 of those were classified as family units (parents with underage children) as of mid‑January 2026, signaling a substantial rise in children held as part of family detention [1] [4].
3. Regional reporting and local spikes underscore the national trend
Local investigations document children being detained during recent enforcement sweeps: school districts in Minnesota reported four students detained in a single district during enforcement activity, including a five‑year‑old, and Alabama reporting shows nearly 70 children detained between Sept. 2023 and Sept. 2025 — examples that mirror the broader growth in family/unit detentions [5] [6] [7].
4. Advocacy and media counts show varying tallies and alarming short‑term numbers
Advocacy and news outlets report high short‑term counts of children in custody: one regional outlet cites 3,800 children detained “so far this year,” and national watchdogs and think tanks document reopening of family centers and increased bed capacity in 2024–2025, all pointing to expanded capacity and use of family detention [8] [2].
5. Administration narratives vs public data: contested framing
The Department of Homeland Security emphasizes that a large share of ICE arrests are of people charged or convicted of crimes, a narrative used to justify broader enforcement [9], but internal DHS figures and independent trackers show rapid growth of non‑criminal detainees and family units in the recent surge — a tension between public messaging and the composition of the detained population visible in the same reporting [1] [10].
6. Conditions, policy changes and political drivers that affect counts
Policy choices — including reopening family detention centers and contracting private facilities — have materially affected how many children are detained; the Brennan Center and others show that expanded bed capacity and reopening facilities in 2024–2025 were coupled with reported overcrowding and renewed family detention programs, while lawsuits and Flores‑related protections remain a contested backdrop [2] [11].
7. What can and cannot be concluded from the supplied reporting
From the provided sources it is clear that the number of children detained in immigration custody rose substantially in the 2023–2026 period as family‑unit detentions increased alongside an unprecedented overall ICE population [1] [4] [2], but the documents here do not supply a complete year‑by‑year child‑specific series beginning in 2016, so an exact numeric comparison (for example, X children in 2016 vs Y in 2026) cannot be produced from these sources alone [3].