🎥 WATCH: ProPublica and FRONTLINE investigate the violence, protests and arrests stemming from the federal immigration sweeps across the country.
"Caught in the Crackdown" premiered Tuesday, April 14 at 10 p.m. EDT/9 p.m. CDT on PBS and online. propub.li/4t9gZkF
So proud that our colleagues and partners work was nominated for two 2026 News and Documentary Emmy Awards including a film version of our reporting on Venezuelans sent by the US to be imprisoned in El Salvador last year www.propublica.org/awards/news-...
Late last year I began speaking to children and their parents detained at Dilley to hear about their experiences in their own words. Parents told me some kids were so distraught they cut themselves or talked about suicide. 2/
Read my first investigation: www.propublica.org/article/life...
Following reporting by ProPublica and others, multiple celebrities have signed an open letter demanding that the Dilley family detention center be shut down.
“No child should be locked in an immigration detention center,” the letter begins. 1/
variety.com/2026/film/ne...
Read more about the families we talked to and the U.S. citizen children separated from their parents by immigration detention here: 8/
www.propublica.org/article/trum...
DHS said in a statement it does not separate families and that immigrant parents can choose to leave the country with their children or to designate someone to care for them, "consistent with past administration’s policies.” 7/
Why is this happening? Current and former officials said ICE guidelines on the way officers should exercise discretion have changed. One example: a directive on how agents should interact with parents was revised this year and stripped of the word "humane." 6/
What we counted: Every day, an average of 50 US citizen kids have had a parent detained. How did we do it? Our reporting included linking FOIA data to ICE flight manifests (research by Gabriel Sandoval) and interviews with ~two dozen affected families 5/
I spoke to another mother, Griselda, picked up in Florida on her way to work. She was sent to ICE detention in Texas by herself even though she said she told agents about her 1-yr-old US citizen and 4-yr-old, who were with a babysitter. Their separation lasted four months. 4/
In Florida, @marioarizabaez.bsky.social met Doris Flores, who was separated from her still nursing four-month-old and her other children when ICE detained her and her fiance at the same time. Her pastor and his wife took in the children, asking “What else could we do?” 3/
My colleague @jeffernsthausen.bsky.social analyzed data shared with @mckenziefunk.com to find Trump is detaining more parents of US citizens with minor criminal histories or none at all. We also found that compared to Biden, moms of U.S. citizens are being deported 4x more often under Trump 2/
NEW: For the first time, ProPublica has been able to quantify how many U.S. citizen children have been directly affected by Trump’s immigration crackdown: more than 11,000 kids had a parent detained — and that’s an undercount. 1/ 🧵
www.propublica.org/article/trum...
NEW: More than 11,000. That’s how many US citizen children have a parent who has been detained under Trump, our new data analysis shows. When Doris Flores was separated from her four-month-old who was still breastfeeding, she turned to her pastor for help.
www.propublica.org/article/trum...
NEW: This week, the average daily population at Dilley dropped to 100 people, compared with over 900 in January. The shift follows weeks of mounting public pressure generated in part by the widespread publication of letters written by detained children. www.propublica.org/article/fami...
The Trump administration said in recent court documents that personal property had not been destroyed and items confiscated during searches were “limited to materials identified as protest-related and not authorized under facility rules.” 5/
Detainees at Dilley previously told ProPublica art supplies that children were using to write letters and create protest signs had been removed in room searches 4/ www.propublica.org/article/dill...
DHS confirmed video calls will no longer be available in Dilley common areas after "live streaming" of the calls online "resulted in the unauthorized dissemination of law enforcement sensitive information,” adding that the video calls are still available in private rooms. 3/
This move comes after ProPublica and others’ reporting on kids’ experiences inside the center, as well as heightened attention from lawmakers and social media figures 2/ www.propublica.org/article/life...
NEW: The Dilley family detention facility disabled video calls on tablets after detainees’ call recordings were shared on social media, according to a document viewed by ProPublica. 1/
The Trump administration turned vast expanses of federal land along the southern border, like this stretch in southern New Mexico, into national defense areas, but their attempts to prosecute "trespassers" are floundering in court.
@propublica.org reports: www.propublica.org/article/immi...
So honored by this recognition of our reporting -- that was a real team effort -- about kids in family immigration detention.
It was in this trove of documents that Avi Asher-Schapiro and Jeff Ernsthausen and I found how Tom Homan grew his net worth before returning to government and helped reveal his and a senior advisor's connections to companies vying for DHS contracts www.propublica.org/article/tom-... ...
ICYMI my colleagues
@perla-trevizo.bsky.social and @g-dvalle.bsky.social in this video broke down the unprecedented immigration moves by the Trump administration in its first year www.propublica.org/article/trum...
Read more about what children at the Dilley detention center are going through in their own words in these stories: www.propublica.org/article/life... and www.propublica.org/article/dill...
DHS, which oversees ICE, said “no one is denied medical care” at the Dilley facility and detained parents have the option to be deported together. CoreCivic, the facility operator, said health and safety is top priority and that medical staff met “the highest standards” 3/
The letter from health professionals says the detention of immigrant children “is causing predictable, severe, and lasting harm to their mental and physical health” and that “even brief confinement can cause psychological trauma and life long harm” 2/
Citing reporting by @propublica.org and others, nearly 4,000 doctors, nurses and health professionals sent a letter to DHS Sec Kristi Noem calling for the immediate release of all children currently in immigration detention. Full letter: tinyurl.com/yz2amueb 1/
Christian wanted people to know what immigrant families like hers were going through inside the Dilley detention center, so she gathered dozens of letters and hid them in her jacket. She and others told me and @mckenziefunk.com its becoming harder to speak out www.propublica.org/article/dill...
I met Maria Antonia inside Dilley in mid-Jan where she had been detained for four months. She told me she was on her way to Disney World when immigration agents intercepted and interrogated her in the airport and sent her and her mom to detention www.propublica.org/article/ice-...
