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Jayapal's shadow hearing accuses ICE of traumatizing children
This was the seventh shadow hearing in Jaypal's series of hearings, each focusing on a different aspect of immigration oversight.
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Jeffin T. Kaleekal - Sat, 28, Mar 2026
- 00:59 EDT
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Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal / Wikimedia commons
Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal hosted a shadow hearing on March 27 to discuss the Trump administration's immigration enforcement actions which are affecting children.
Jayapal, a Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Immigration, Integrity, Security, and Enforcement, alleged that the hearing focussed on the trauma that President Donald Trump and the Department of Homeland Security have caused to the children in the country.
This was the seventh shadow hearing in Jaypal's series of hearings, each focusing on a different aspect of immigration oversight.
Previous hearings have focused on Trump’s assault on Minnesota, detention abuses, Trump’s assault on Chicago, families that have been torn apart, unlawful third-country deportations, and efforts to undermine due process.
During the March 27 hearing, Jayapal alleged, "In the first seven months of Donald Trump’s term, more than 11,000 US citizen children have had a parent detained. That means that every single day, 50 US citizen children, on average, have had a parent detained.”
Highlighting the severity of the issue, she continued, “Having a parent kidnapped and disappeared is bad enough. But too often, ICE is using violence to arrest parents right in front of their children or even as “bait” as we saw with the horrific case of 5-year old Liam Ramos. Ramos was detained by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers after arriving home from preschool no Jan. 20 , in a Minneapolis suburb.
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Neha Desai, the Managing Director of Children’s Human Rights & Dignity at the National Center for Youth Law, described the actions as a "calculated move", and said, "Over the past 20 years, I have watched children in immigration custody go from being a largely invisible population with few legal protections to a highly politicized population of children whose rights are being systematically dismantled."
She noted that the actions have been already outlined in Project 2025, a 900-page policy "wish list", with a set of proposals that would expand presidential power and impose an ultra-conservative social vision, and are aimed at reversing decades of hard-fought protections for some of the most vulnerable children in this country.”
Project 2025 was disavowed by President Trump during his presidential campaign after the list faced significant backlash over some of its more radical ideas.
Donovan-Kaloust, the Director of Legal Services at the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, said “Unaccompanied children shouldn’t be used as bait, they shouldn’t be used as political pawns, and they’re not ‘invaders’ as Stephen Miller would have us believe.
He continued, "They’re children, and they deserve to be treated like children and afforded protection and safety, not detention and deportation.”
Jayapal was joined by Suzanne Bonamici (OR-01), Joaquin Castro (TX-20), Judy Chu (CA-28), Maxine Dexter (OR-03), Jesús G. “Chuy” García (IL-04), Glenn Ivey (MD-04), Christian Menefee (TX-18), Kelly Morrison (MN-03), Deborah Ross (NC-02), Andrea Salinas (OR-06).
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