Brookings: 100,000+ US-Born Children Separated from Detained Parents; Trump Proposes Raising Afrikaner Refugee Cap from 7,500 to 17,500

A Brookings Institution report released around May 18-19, 2026 estimated that more than 100,000 US-born children — approximately 145,000 total children — have likely been separated from at least one parent during the Trump administration's immigration enforcement campaign, with no systematic ICE protocol to protect the children of detainees. Approximately 36.5% of separated children are under age 6. ICE personnel frequently do not ask detainees whether they have children before detaining them. Separately, the Trump administration submitted a report to Congress proposing to raise the annual Afrikaner refugee cap from 7,500 to 17,500 — an increase of 10,000 — citing an 'emergency refugee situation' for white South Africans whom Trump has described as facing 'genocide.' The administration has effectively closed the broader US refugee program to all other nationalities while fast-tracking Afrikaner admissions. The South African government and independent experts dispute Trump's genocide characterization, calling it a misrepresentation of post-apartheid land reform policies. The two developments sharply crystallize the Trump administration's immigration framework: mass enforcement against Latin American migrants on one side and preferential refugee status for a specific white ethnic group on the other, drawing criticism from civil rights, human rights, and immigration organizations.