A Father’s Day without fathers

This Father’s Day, millions of children across America will wake up knowing exactly where their fathers are. They will share breakfast, exchange cards, fire up the grill, or simply enjoy the comfort of having Dad nearby.

Other children will spend the day wondering when — or if — they will see their fathers again.

Across the country, ICE arrests have become a familiar sight. Whether we see them happen in real life in our own communities or watch the scene play out again and again on social media in cities and states across the U.S., the picture is the same. Big black cars with darkened windows, lots of armed, masked agents in tactical gear taking people, mostly men, away in handcuffs.

It is likely that many are fathers. Historically, that has been the case. While reliable immigration data is hard to come by under this administration, before 2025 ICE regularly reported detaining a population that was overwhelmingly male, with a median age of 30.

The scale of arrests under the Trump crackdown means many more boys and girls are missing their dads. A recent Brookings Institute analysis posits that during the government’s aggressive detention and deportation campaign, more than 100,000 children have been separated from their parents, with about three quarters being U.S. citizens. That number will inevitably swell now that the enhanced immigration crackdown budget has been approved by Congress.

But statistics, however staggering, tell only part of the story. Behind every number is a child.

As attorneys representing immigrant children held in detention by the federal government, Children’s Rights meets regularly with children at the Family Residential Treatment Center in Dilley, Texas. They live in a series of bleak trailers with a parent, usually their mother, under severe conditions, denied the most basic needs, held for crushing lengths of stay, without adequate medical care, enduring harsh treatment at the hands of guards. Many of them are also missing the care and daily presence of their fathers, which has enormous consequences for any child.

On a recent visit, our attorneys met J.A.I., a 16-year-old boy who had been at Dilley for almost 2 months. The family was sleeping at home in Austin when they heard pounding at the door and men yelling. ICE agents pointed guns at him and his younger brother, threw them against a wall, grabbed the boys by their hair, and handcuffed them both. They watched as their parents were shackled.

“At the detention center, they separated my brother, my mom and I from my Dad. Around 1 p.m., they told my brother, mom, and me that we were going to a family detention center. They didn’t tell us why our Dad wasn’t going with us or where he was going. I asked if I could give my Dad a hug goodbye, and they said no. I kept asking and asking — but they wouldn’t let me. That was the last time I saw him.”

J.A.I. has ample reason to be anxious and fearful. The separation from his father adds to his suffering and could cause additional long-term harm to his mental and physical health. Years of clinical research shows that children separated from their parents can experience severe psychological distress, resulting in anxiety, loss of appetite, sleep disturbances, withdrawal, self-harming behavior, and decline in educational achievement. Even a brief time apart is damaging, but the longer parent and child are separated, the more pronounced the child’s symptoms of anxiety and depression become.

Another person detained at Dilley is R.G.H. He is 36 years old. He and his 10-year-old son have been there for almost three months. He speaks mournfully about the child his son was before they were taken: “My son was in fourth grade when we were arrested. He wanted to be an engineer and build houses. His favorite subject was math. He was also very athletic and loved sports, especially soccer. Since being detained here, he misses school, his friends, playing, our apartment that we don’t have anymore, his freedom, and everything he had in the apartment. He wrote all this in a letter.”

A judge determined that the boy could be released from Dilley while the father would remain. Yet neither father nor son agreed to the separation. They want to be together despite the hardship and the mistreatment. The guards that yell, the soggy shoes that never dry out, the fungal infection that won’t clear up, the uncertainty about what will happen to them.

Father’s Day invites us to honor the bond between parents and children. It should also compel us to think about the children whose fathers are missing from the table this year — not because of death, abandonment, or circumstance, but because government action took them away.

What does it say about us when a child is denied one last hug goodbye?

And is this truly who we want to be?

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