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Federal immigration policies that separated children from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border had real, traumatic consequences on the most vulnerable members of our society. This series of exclusive investigations identified “tender age shelters” warehousing babies and toddlers, exposed a Virginia shelter where migrant teenagers described horrific abuse and followed a Salvadoran mother who came close to losing her daughter to adoption, revealing the legal possibility that separated children could be permanently taken from their parents. AP also followed the money, highlighting the billion-dollar business in migrant child detention, a sector that has grown tenfold in the last decade. Just before year's end, AP broke the news that the government was keeping most of the 14,000 migrant kids in its care in shelters with hundreds of others, despite expert warnings that mass institutionalization can cause life-long trauma. Based on deep source reporting and exclusive data, the story was the first to provide the number of children in every government-contracted detention center, shelter and foster care program dating back to 2017 - data the government had been withholding all year.