ICE Arrests of Children Have Doubled, With 8,592 Arrested This Term, as Detainees Hunger Strike at Georgia's Largest Detention Centre

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has arrested 8,592 children since January 2025, including 562 under the age of four, according to an analysis of ICE data by the Marshall Project, a non-profit news organisation that covers criminal justice. That’s about double the rate of the previous administration. About 8,700 children have been held in detention over the same period. New York accounts for the most arrests, at 1,336.

Most arrests of children happen when ICE detains families together or picks up teenagers. ICE says it doesn’t target children and that it detains families to keep them together. Under the Flores settlement, children generally can’t be held in unlicensed family detention for more than 20 days. The administration has asked courts to end the settlement.

Folkston

At the Folkston ICE Processing Center in southeast Georgia, about 500 detainees began a hunger strike, according to advocacy groups. They are protesting conditions and delays in their cases. The centre is run by GEO Group, which is carrying out a $47 million expansion to about 3,000 beds, making it among the largest in the country. ICE hasn’t confirmed the number on strike.

The quota background

ICE is under pressure to raise arrests. Reports that officials were told to add 1,000 arrests a day, which DHS denies are quotas, were covered in our earlier post. Detention has reached record levels, paid for by the tens of billions Congress gave ICE in last year’s budget law.

Why it matters

The children’s figures come from ICE’s own records and give Congress a concrete measure to ask about at oversight hearings. Democrats on the Homeland Security committees have asked for briefings on child detention. The money for the expansion is already appropriated, so Congress’s main tool is reporting requirements and limits in the next DHS spending bill, due by 11 December.