ICE arrests of children in San Diego region skyrocketed in 2025, records show

Who’s going to pick up my kids from school?

That was Estefany Pineda’s first thought on the January morning when ICE agents arrested her and her husband, Reinaldo Chirino.

The agents detained them just after they'd dropped their kids off at school in Chula Vista, according to their lawyer, Nerea Sholl, an associate with the Law Office of Andrew Nietor.

“As they were being processed, the mom in particular was very vocal about her children – that there was no family able to pick them up, there was no help for the children,” Sholl said.

The ICE agents gave the parents two options. Find someone willing to drop everything, pick up their kids (ages 5 and 14) and care for them indefinitely, or they'd be put in the foster care system.

The couple found a friend willing to look after the kids. And, a month later, Sholl got Pineda and Chirino out of detention and the family is together again. The parents continue to fight their deportation case.

But the emotional damage to the kids was already done.

The couple's children are among thousands in the San Diego region who’ve been impacted by President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign.

Like them, many aren’t the target of immigration enforcement themselves. But their parents and relatives are - which leaves these children dealing with the emotional toll of family separation.

Then there’s the more than 250 children who ICE arrested in San Diego and Imperial counties last year - a dramatic increase from just 27 children arrested in 2024, according to federal data.

Once arrested, those children could be sent to detention centers or group homes in California or out of state.

Sholl said the effects on Pineda’s children were almost immediately apparent.

“The parents have told me ample examples of things their kids have said that makes it clear they’ve been traumatized,” Sholl said.

Their 14-year-old son already had a healthy fear of ICE and Border Patrol agents. Now he’s constantly on edge, especially whenever his dad’s ankle monitor beeps.

The 5-year-old is showing signs of separation anxiety.

“That first night, when mom was home and she was putting the kids to bed, the little boy looked up at her and said, ‘If I go to sleep are you going to be here when I wake up in the morning,’” Sholl added.

Decades of research shows harm

This is not at all surprising to Dalal Katsiaficas, an associate professor of educational psychology at the University of Illinois Chicago.

“Immigration enforcement and the harms it causes are nothing new,” he said.

Anticipating more aggressive immigration enforcement during President Donald Trump’s second term, Katsiaficas co-authored a policy paper that includes decades of research showing the negative impacts of direct and indirect immigration enforcement on children.

For example, children have an increased risk of depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, separation anxiety and delayed developmental milestones, Katsiaficas said.

The policy paper was published by the Society for Research in Child Development. And it was meant to be both a warning and a potential solution, said co-author Guadalupe Diaz Lara, an assistant professor at CalState Fullerton’s Department of Child & Adolescent Studies.

“We wanted to have something ready that really focused on outlining what the research says,” Diaz Lara said.

The policy brief comes with recommendations that local governments or school districts can implement to try to lessen the negative impacts. For example, school districts can proactively ready themselves to provide mental health and other supportive services to impacted students or their parents.

More time in detention

Immigration detention in the San Diego region looks different for children than adults. While all adults are detained in the Otay Mesa Detention Center, there are two options for children.

If they’re detained with their parents, they’ll most likely be transferred to out-of-state facilities like the controversial family detention center in Diley, Texas. That’s where Liam Ramos, the 5-year-old boy arrested in Minneapolis was sent with his father earlier this year.

Unaccompanied children detained at border crossings (and more recently in the interior) in San Diego are sent to one of several smaller facilities overseen by the Office of Refugee & Resettlement, or ORR. And individual ORR facilities vary.

They can look like group home settings, juvenile detention or even makeshift tent camps, according to Mickey Donovan-Kaloust, the director of legal services at the San Diego-based Immigrant Defenders Law Center.

In 2021, ORR temporarily turned the San Diego Convention Center into a temporary shelter for unaccompanied children from Central American countries.

Regardless of what shape they take, these facilities are meant to be for short-term stays. And before the current Trump administration, the stays were typically 30 days, but federal records now show children being detained for an average of 117 days.

“They are not designed to hold children for months and months on end, which is what is happening right now,” Donovan-Kaloust said.

In a statement, a spokesperson for ORR they agency ensures that comprehensive medical and mental health services are available before a child is placed in any care provider program.

"ORR’s placement decisions are guided by child welfare best practices and are designed to ensure each child is housed in the safest, most developmentally appropriate setting," the statement read.

Immigrant Defenders Law Center has represented multiple children who stayed in ORR custody for six months or longer, Donovan-Kaloust said. In one extreme case, the law firm filed a federal lawsuit to release a child who was detained for more than nine months, she added.

Donovan-Kaloust said lawyers witness the damaging impacts of long-term detention on a regular basis.

“We are seeing lots of tears, a lot of mistrust of adults – you know, they will shut down and won’t want to meet their attorneys anymore,” she said. “Lots of confusion and asking, ‘why am I still here, when will I be able to go with my family?’ and no one can provide an answer to them.”

Too traumatized to tell their story

Immigration lawyers say representing children adds another layer of complexity to already difficult court cases.

This is particularly true of cases involving asylum and other forms of humanitarian protection where children have to talk about past traumatic events, according to Carmen Chavez, the executive director of the San Diego-based Casa Cornelia Law Center.

“It’s very difficult [to succeed] if the child is so traumatized that they can’t even tell their story,” she said.

Casa Cornelia employs a social services coordinator who helps address the needs of the children they represent, she said.

The coordinator helps children get access to counseling or psychotherapy, sets up medical or dental appointments, and sometimes even helps them with a new backpack or shoes, said Matthew Canon, a lawyer at Casa Cornelia who leads the children’s program.

Canon said he’s seen children going through the immigration justice system start out as “bright, happy kids,” but end up anxious and depressed.

Chavez said it’s important for San Diegans to remember that children impacted by immigration enforcement – whether they are detained or they are separated from their parents – are part of the community.

They could be your kid’s classmate or teammate, she said. Their parents could be your co-workers or neighbors.

“We’re talking about youngsters who have lived through very traumatic, violent circumstances, and somehow they’ve emerged,” she said. “That human spirit of wanting to survive, wanting to find safety and find it here.”