CALIFORNIA — Federal immigration authorities have arrested more than 1,600 children in California since President Donald Trump returned to office, the highest number of any state in the country, according to a new analysis of government records by The Marshall Project.
The investigation found that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has arrested at least 8,592 children nationwide during Trump’s second term, including 1,635 in California, 1,477 in Texas and 1,336 in New York.
The figures, based on federal records extending through early August 2026, reveal a sharp increase in immigration enforcement involving children, many of whom have no criminal history and were apprehended as part of broader efforts to detain and deport immigrant families.
The analysis found that ICE arrested more than twice as many children during the first half of 2026 compared with the corresponding period in 2025. Arrests increased throughout the year, exceeding 1,100 nationwide in July alone.
California’s position at the top of the national rankings raises questions about the extent to which immigration enforcement has affected children and families throughout the state, including those living in communities far from the U.S.-Mexico border.
The data does not establish how many of the California arrests occurred in Northern California or identify how many children were apprehended during operations involving their parents.
Nevertheless, the findings demonstrate the scale of immigration enforcement involving minors in a state where immigrant communities have increasingly faced federal enforcement activity.
The Marshall Project’s interactive dashboard also documents a dramatic increase in the number of children held in federal immigration detention.
Since Trump returned to office in January 2025, ICE has detained at least 8,755 children nationwide, including 562 infants and toddlers younger than four.
The average daily number of children in ICE custody has increased from approximately 23 during the preceding year to roughly 200 under the current administration, an increase of more than eightfold.
Those numbers reflect the administration’s reinstatement of family immigration detention in early 2025, reversing policies that had sharply limited the practice.
The government has also deported more than 22,000 children during Trump’s second term, according to the analysis, although the majority of those removals followed encounters at or near the border rather than arrests in established communities.
Deportations originating from the country’s interior have also increased substantially, surpassing levels recorded during recent administrations, including Trump’s first term.
The distinction is important because children deported from the interior may have lived in the United States for years, attended American schools and established longstanding connections to their communities.
The Marshall Project found that most immigration violations are civil rather than criminal offenses and that the vast majority of children represented in ICE arrest records had no criminal conviction or pending criminal charge beyond an immigration violation.
The findings challenge any assumption that enforcement against children is primarily associated with criminal activity.
The investigation also documented troubling conditions under which children and their families have been detained.
In a separate report published alongside the dashboard, The Marshall Project described children being held in hotels and temporary detention rooms, sometimes without meaningful access to attorneys or relatives.
Families reported being confined to hotel rooms under continuous surveillance, having limited access to adequate food and being unable to communicate freely with people outside the facilities.
In one case described in the investigation, a family that had lived in New York for nine years was transported to Texas and detained in a hotel for nine days.
The mother reported that guards remained in the room around the clock, including near the bathroom, while her children worried about missing school and being separated from their lives in New York.
The family’s attorney reported being unable to locate them through ICE’s detainee locator system, preventing him from providing legal assistance while they remained in custody.
The conditions have raised questions about compliance with the longstanding Flores settlement, which established federal standards governing the detention, treatment and release of immigrant children.
Under the settlement and subsequent court orders, federal authorities face restrictions on detaining children in unlicensed facilities and must comply with standards intended to protect their health, safety and access to legal assistance.
In April 2026, the federal court overseeing the settlement reiterated restrictions on prolonged hotel detention, permitting only limited exceptions for brief stays associated with transportation or imminent departures.
A court filing by attorneys representing detained children documented 43 children held in hotels for more than 72 hours during December 2025 and January 2026, including an 8-year-old who remained in a hotel for more than 16 days before being released.
The filing argued that these prolonged stays violated existing judicial restrictions.
The litigation highlights a continuing conflict between the administration’s expansive immigration enforcement policies and legal protections established for children in federal custody.
The Department of Homeland Security disputed the accuracy of the data used by The Marshall Project, which was obtained through public records requests by the Deportation Data Project, a research collaboration involving UC Berkeley and UCLA.
According to The Marshall Project, DHS did not provide evidence supporting its challenge to the records or offer alternative figures.
The researchers acknowledged limitations in the underlying government data, including the absence of precise birth dates.
Because the records identify birth years rather than complete dates of birth, the analysis used conservative age estimates that likely undercount the number of children affected.
The researchers also distinguished between children arrested directly by ICE and those entering ICE detention after encounters with other federal agencies, including Border Patrol. Consequently, arrest and detention totals are not directly interchangeable.
For California, the findings present additional questions about the geography and consequences of immigration enforcement.
Although the state recorded the nation’s highest number of child arrests, the published figures do not establish what proportion occurred in border communities, metropolitan areas or inland regions such as the Sacramento Valley.
Nor do the statewide totals reveal how many affected children were enrolled in California schools, how long they remained in detention or whether they were ultimately deported or released.
Those distinctions are particularly important in evaluating the effects of immigration enforcement on families already established in California communities.
The findings also come amid broader changes in federal enforcement patterns. A Prison Policy Initiative analysis of ICE records documented substantial increases in immigration arrests across California since January 2025, including arrests conducted directly in communities rather than through transfers from local law enforcement.
That broader enforcement expansion provides context for the rising number of children entering the immigration system, although the data does not establish how individual child arrests were carried out.
The Marshall Project intends to update its dashboard as additional government records become available, providing a means of tracking whether arrests, detention and deportations of children continue to increase.
For California, the central unanswered question extends beyond the number of children taken into federal custody.
It concerns what happens to those children after their arrests, whether they retain meaningful access to their families and legal representation, and how federal immigration policies are affecting the communities where they have been living.
With more than 1,600 children already arrested in the state and nationwide child detentions increasing sharply, the available records suggest that the treatment of immigrant children has become an increasingly significant component of federal immigration enforcement.
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