According to the report, Paying the Price: The Impact of Immigration Raids on America's Children, approximately 5 million U.S. citizen children have at least one undocumented parent. A lot of young American lives are at stake.

The report was published by the National Council of La Raza and The Urban Institute and focuses on three sites where major raids that have occurred in the last year: Greeley, Colorado, and Grand Island, Nebraska, where ICE raided Swift & Co. meatpacking plants in December 2006 as part of a national enforcement action that detained more than 1,200 people; and New Bedford, Massachusetts, where hundreds of children were abandoned when more than 300 adults were detained in a raid on Michael Bianco, Inc., a government-contracted manufacturer of military backpacks.

Among the report's findings:

• The number of children affected by ICE raids were on average about half the number of adults arrested, and a large majority of them were U.S. citizens. Most are infants, toddlers, and preschoolers.
• Many detainees had very limited access to telephones to communicate with their families and lawyers, and many were transferred to detention centers in other states, further isolating them.
• Some parents were released later on the day of the raids, but some were held for several days. Many parents were afraid to tell authorities they had children because they did not want their children to be arrested.
• Following the raids, abandoned children and the people who stepped in to care for them were lacking the barest essentials: food, baby formula, diapers, clothing, and other necessities.
• After the arrest or disappearance of their parents, children experienced feelings of abandonment and showed symptoms of emotional trauma, psychological duress, and mental health problems.
• The hardship that these children's families and communities faced "increased over time, as families' meager savings and funds from previous paychecks were spent." Fear of future raids also weighed heavily in communities as time passed, and researchers found members of the affected communities suffered myriad mental health problems including depression, separation anxiety disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and suicidal thoughts.
• Few families sought public assistance following the raids, even though some of their family members qualified for aid. Many feared that going to a social service agency for help would put their family at risk for further arrests.

This inhumane treatment of children-depriving them of their caretakers and basic needs and subjecting them to mental trauma-goes against the principle of protecting the best interests of the child, which has long been a part of America's laws and policies. As the report states, "the question is not whether to enforce immigration laws but how."

Among The Urban Institute and NCLR's recommendations were a call for Congress to provide oversight of immigration enforcement activities and for ICE to take steps to protect the children that will inevitably be left alone after a raid. The groups also said that ICE should provide detainees access to counsel and ensure access to telephones. Other recommendations addressed steps schools, social service agencies, churches, immigration advocates, and immigrants should take to protect their communities' children.