Kristi Noem is out at the Department of Homeland Security, but thousands of children are in — inside DHS jails.
“It is well past time for Congress to demand the release of children from immigration prisons across this country,” First Focus on Children president Bruce Lesley writes on Substack, “and for DHS Nominee Markwayne Mullin to commit to protecting children from further harm.”
On February 26, 2026, nearly 4,000 health care professionals from 49 states sent a letter to former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, Lesley writes, with the request that “the children held in immigration detention facilities be immediately released.”
The evaluation of these 3,954 “physicians, nurses, mental health professionals, allied health care professionals, and public health professionals who care for children in clinics, emergency departments, hospitals, and intensive care units across the United States” was not political. It was clinical.
An analysis by the Marshall Project found that at least 3,800 children under age 18, including 20 infants, have been booked into detention centers since President Trump took office.
Researchers at Arizona State University’s Children’s Equity Project recently published a new report titled The Scars of Family Detention and Separation in the U.S. Immigration System that says “a plethora of research, and common sense, indisputably point to the fact that both detention and family separation are traumatic for children of all ages, and harm children’s wellbeing, development, mental health, and education.”
And yet….the Administration is rapidly increasing the number of detention facilities.
And Congress has appropriated billions in additional funding to expand systems that experts have repeatedly warned are damaging children.
“As a nation, we have a choice,” Lesley writes, “and for God’s sake, let’s choose to end government-imposed child abuse once and for all. FREE THE CHILDREN!”