But hundreds of children like Liam remain locked up like criminals. The Marshall Report found:

The number of children in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention on a given day has skyrocketed, jumping more than sixfold since the start of the second Trump administration. The Marshall Project analyzed data obtained by the Deportation Data Project and found that ICE held around 170 children on an average day under Trump. During the last 16 months of the Biden administration, ICE held around 25 children a day.

That tally does not include those detained in the recent Minneapolis surge or “children in the custody of the Border Patrol or the Office of Refugee Resettlement, where children are held without a guardian.” (Yes, without a guardian.)

Moreover, as the Washington Post reported, “Advocates and attorneys contend that hundreds more youth have been affected in cases where authorities have separated families, which are not comprehensively tracked. Those include instances in which parents have been deported but their children remain in the United States in government custody.”

The Post continued: “Attorney Eric Lee said he saw children all over the facility during a recent visit, some as young as 3 or 4. ‘What is happening in these detention centers is worse than anybody thinks,’ he said.” Tragically, these cases are becoming commonplace: