This week includes several news stories about the scope of the government’s deportation agenda that continues amid the change of command at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). La Opinion reported that According to a new report from the Deportation Data Project, “President Donald Trump’s immigration policies have quadrupled immigration detention and quintupled deportations, in addition to maintaining a trend of arresting any undocumented person, regardless of whether they have no prison record.”
“ICE detentions more than quadrupled (4.4 times). ICE transfers from jails and prisons, which accounted for the majority of detentions before 2025, practically doubled,” the newspaper added.
Prison transfers to ICE are possible under 287(g) agreements between immigration agencies and state and local governments. Those agreements have increased significantly under the Trump administration, 1,501 of them from January 2025 to March 2026.
Another element that influences the increase in arrests are street arrests that, in fact, go beyond the streets and extend to courts and ICE offices. According to the report, this represents “a new phenomenon.”
Children are the most affected by Trump’s deportation campaign
Another report, this time from the Marshall Project, concluded that “ICE has detained more than 6,200 children during the president’s second terma figure that has set off alarms among human rights defenders and health experts,” wrote La Opinión.
“The increase in detained immigrant children is significant. During the last year of Joe Biden’s administration, the daily average of detained minors was barely 24. With the return of Trump and the reactivation of family detention, that number shot up to 226 minors a day, that is, almost ten times more,” the newspaper added.
Various organizations, activists, immigration lawyers and family members constantly denounce the deplorable conditions in detention centers where there is no prompt or adequate medical care, limited education and not to mention spoiled food.
“All Americans should be dismayed by the fact that we are imprisoning thousands of children,” warned Leecia Welch, moral advisor for the organization Kids’ Rights, reported La Opinión. “This creates an incredible amount of trauma.”
The boy Liam Conejo Ramos exemplifies that trauma
La Opinión also reported that Liam Conejo Ramos, the five-year-old boy detained in Minnesota with his father and sent to a detention center in Texas whose story caused outrage, is experiencing after-effects from that experience, according to his parents. Liam and his father were freed after the intervention of Texas Democratic Congressman Joaquín Castro. “More than two months after the arrest, his parents assure that the minor lives in constant fear and receives psychological care to cope with the trauma,” the newspaper reported.
“As parents, we are very worried that he will not be the same as before…We are worried that this could last a long time,” Liam’s father, Adrián Conejo Arias, told CBS Data.
And the case of Liam and his family is far from being resolved. The government rejected his asylum requests and also appealed the court decision that resulted in his release.
On that occasion, federal judge Fred Briery, of the Western District of Texas, noted that the detention of Liam and his father “has its origin in the ill-conceived and incompetent application by the government of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it means traumatizing the children.”
And in an exception to the rule, ICE releases military wife
Annie Ramos, a 22-year-old undocumented woman recently married to 23-year-old military officer Matthew Smooth, was detained by ICE when she went to Fort Polk, Louisiana, to register as a military spouse. She was sent to a detention center because she had a deportation order issued when she was just 22 months old.
The case generated great media attention and the intervention of the Democratic senator from Arizona, Tag Kelly, achieved the release of Ramos after five days of detention.
However, the outcome of Ramos’ case is an exception, not the rule because thousands like her, who have lived in the United States all their lives and have no criminal history, become a priority for detention and deportation for the Trump government and its quota of 3,000 daily arrests.
CBP deports a US citizen to Mexico, Univision reports
The national correspondent, Lidia Terrazas, reported that Brian Morales was born in Denver, Colorado, but grew up in Mexico. He returned to the United States a year ago and was detained during a traffic withhold watch near Fredericksburg, Texas, along with other members of a construction crew.
Morales claims that three CBP agents did not believe him that he is a citizen and that he has the documents to prove it. Instead, they threatened to charge him with fraud and imprison him if he did not sign his voluntary departure. He was summarily deported to Mexico.
Racial profiling is one of the practices applied by the Trump administration in its campaign of detentions and deportations, which has resulted in the arrest of authorized residents and citizens.
“My son is very different,” said Liam Conejo Ramos’ mother, Erika Ramos. When she sees police officers, she added, “she says: it’s ICE, mommy.”
