What if?

Immigrant families, lawyers, and advocates say that the way the Trump administration is carrying out deportations is unnecessarily traumatizing for children and leaves parents struggling to arrange for housing, medical care, or schooling after their deportation. Under this administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has detained thousands of children under 18, according to the Deportation Data Project. Detained families said ICE kept them in the dark and gave them little time to prepare. Families left behind medicines, pets, cars and houses. Some experts say that while deportation is almost always difficult for children, the government could take steps to make it less damaging, including by not detaining them and their families prior to deportation