How many children are affected by parental immigrant detention? — DATA FROM MAY 13, 2026
These are U.S. citizen children whose parents have been taken into immigration detention. Scroll to see what 145,000 looks like.
How many is 145,000?
1 child
And then this
Of those 145,000, more than 22,000 U.S. citizen children have lost every parent in the home to immigration detention.
These are our neighbors' children. They are our children.
Notes & source
Figures from "How many children are affected by parental immigrant detention?" by Maria Cancian, Nissi Cantu, Eileen Powell, and Tara Watson (Brookings, May 2026). The visualization uses a convention of 24 children per classroom and 500 children per school.
Read the Brookings report