Opinion | We need a plan, not prison, for immigrant children

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Five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos was recently detained in Minnesota and then shipped to a federal detention center in Texas alongside his father. He was jailed not because a court deemed it necessary but because the system had no plan for his care.

Drawing on decades of experience treating families affected by generational trauma and studying the developmental and public health impact of parental incarceration, we have seen the profound toll this approach takes on children, parents and communities. The federal Feb. 12 announcement that Operation Metro Surge will soon end in the Twin Cities area does not alleviate our concern.

Liam’s ordeal is not an isolated incident. A recent analysis by the Marshall Project found that the daily number of children in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody has jumped more than sixfold over the past two years. On some days, more than 400 children were detained. This is not merely a legal issue. It is a child-welfare crisis.

Two distinct but related practices are at issue: separating children from their parents, and detaining children alongside them. Both are governed by clear standards in U.S. law and international human rights principles. Both cause harm. And neither should occur simply because the government failed to plan for a child’s care following the arrest of their parents.

Across U.S. law, custody decisions do not happen casually. Family courts and child-welfare agencies are required to consider the best interests of the child. Judges weigh factors including safety, emotional bonds, stability and continuity of care. While these standards may be applied unevenly in practice, the guiding principle is clear: Children’s needs come first.

ICE has been operating outside these norms. Parents are being detained without any meaningful assessment of who will care for their children or how separation or detention will affect them. Children’s futures are decided not by design, but by default.

Keeping a child with a detained parent may avoid the trauma of separation, but it introduces a different one: incarceration itself. Liam and his father were first held in a temporary holding facility in Minnesota, then sent to a “family residential center” in Texas. The distinctions between facilities matter administratively, but not developmentally. From a child’s perspective, these are carceral environments, regardless of what they are called.

In these settings, children are confined and subjected to surveillance, restricted movement and profound uncertainty, without the safeguards required in child-welfare systems. Even facilities designed for families disrupt routines, limit access to education and pediatric care, and expose children to toxic stress. Pediatric and mental health professionals agree these conditions are harmful to children and fall far short of basic developmental, educational and medical standards.

Separating children from parents is not a humane alternative to incarcerating them together. Research shows that children rely on stable caregivers to regulate stress and build healthy brains. Sudden separation from caregivers and confinement trigger intense, prolonged stress, increasing risks for anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress, developmental delays and chronic illness. Parents suffer as well with worsening mental health, making reunification harder.

The line is clear: A child should never be routinely detained or separated solely because a parent has no available caregiver. Evidence-based, trauma-informed practices in public safety and child welfare settings provide clear guidance on prioritizing children’s well-being. Current immigration enforcement ignores these existing practices. Practical, proven steps exist:

We judge a society not by how efficiently it exercises power, but by where it draws its limits. Separating children from parents without regard for their best interests or confining them, even alongside their parents, crosses that line.