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THE WEEKLY REVEAL
Saturday, July 25, 2026
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ICE Took Mom and Dad. Now the Kids Are on Their Own.
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Imagine being a kid and learning that both your parents have been arrested by ICE. You and your siblings need to figure out how to survive on your own.
Today’s episode of Reveal shadows four siblings in President Donald Trump’s backyard, near Mar-a-Lago in Florida, as they try to do that. They’re all US citizens, but their parents are undocumented and were detained last fall. Thirteen-year-old Cynthia is the youngest. Then there’s Romeo Jr., 15, who dreams of becoming a surgeon. Jessica, 18, is bubbly and creative. And Eliza, 21, is the practical one: She had to drop out of college to take over the family landscaping business, so they can keep food on the table.
Together, they are trying to navigate an impossible situation. They’ve lived in the United States their entire lives, and now they may have to move to Guatemala or stay back without some of their family.
This episode—a collaboration with filmmakers Max Maldonado and José Jesús Zaragoza—follows them over the course of several months, through some of their most emotional moments: from graduating high school without a parent to testifying in court and hoping to persuade an immigration judge to let them stay together.
It’s an inside look that many of us have never seen or even really thought about. As immigration enforcement sweeps the country, what happens to the children left behind? An estimated 205,000 kids have seen a parent detained by ICE over the past year and a half; about 145,000 of those children are American citizens. That’s significantly more than the roughly 5,000 kids who were separated from their parents during Trump’s first term, when everyone was talking about the family separation crisis at the border.
“The scale and scope of what we are bearing witness to right now is so much bigger, so much greater than what we saw in 2018,” one attorney told us.
You also might not realize that that horrible chapter from 2018 is not actually over. In this episode, we’ll also introduce you to a young boy named Ederson and his sister, Briseidy. Ederson was taken from his mom at the border as a toddler during the first Trump administration, and now, years later, both siblings were separated from her after she was wrongfully deported last year.
Our goal is to show you a perspective you may not have considered and help you understand the political roller-coaster that led to this moment. After spending time with Ederson, Briseidy, Cynthia, Romeo, Jessica, and Eliza, we haven’t been able to get their stories out of our heads. We hope you’ll listen.
-Samantha Michaels and Isabela Dias
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🎧 Other places to listen: Spotify, Overcast, iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Staten Island v. New York City With Revisionist History
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Spencer Platt/Getty
This week, we’re bringing you a special episode from Revisionist History, Malcolm Gladwell’s podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood. Gladwell’s show recently investigated what was once the biggest secession movement in the US since the Civil War: the movement by disillusioned residents in Staten Island to secede from New York City.
“The Staten Island Problem,” Revisionist History’s newest five-part series, reconstructs the battle for New York during the turbulent early 1990s—the rise of Rudy Giuliani, the peak of the homicide rate, the Wu-Tang Clan, young Donald Trump, and the first Black mayor of New York—all through the prism of the city’s oft-forgotten borough. Why tell this story now? Because the island’s secession movement is an early example of the politics of resentment that dominates America today.
The first episode of “The Staten Island Problem” tells the story of David Dinkins, the first Black mayor of New York, facing off with the borough president of Staten Island, all while trying to hold his city together.
Revisionist History and “The Staten Island Problem” are produced by Pushkin Industries. Check out the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app.
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Find this episode wherever you listen to Reveal, and don’t forget to subscribe:
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As the Trump administration aims to deport millions of people over the next four years, Reveal tells the human stories of those caught up in ICE raids.
Photo Credit: Michael M. Santiago/Getty
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Since the Trump administration started its nationwide crackdown on immigration, ICE has shot at more than 20 people, killing six. While this is a terrifying development, it’s also unsurprising when you consider that the president has turned the agency into his own paramilitary force.
Photo Credit: Dave Decker/ZUMA
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When Minneapolis was under siege, our Minnesotan reporters Nate Halverson and Artis Curiskis looked into how their home state is teaching the country to resist federal agents who have arrested children, killed citizens in the street, and pepper-sprayed high schoolers.
Photo Credit: Richard Tsong-Taatarii/Minnesota Star
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404 Media previously obtained internal ICE emails revealing the agency’s facial recognition app and catalogued social media videos showing agents scanning people’s faces to verify their citizenship.
Reveal speaks to a person who appears to have had that technology used against him.
Photo Credit: Anthony Vazquez/Chicago Sun-Times/AP
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Abortion rates were expected to tank after Roe v. Wade was overturned. Instead, medication abortion became easy to get—and it changed everything.
A look at post-Roe America, coming next week on Reveal.
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This issue of The Weekly Reveal was written by Arianna Coghill and edited by Nikki Frick. If you enjoyed this issue, forward it to a friend. Have some thoughts? Drop us a line with feedback or ideas!
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