Hillary Clinton rips Trump on migrant child detentions, but Bill Clinton’s own record cuts deep

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton criticized the Trump administration's immigration enforcement practices, warning that the detention of thousands of migrant children is causing "terrible damage" – but data from former President Bill Clinton's tenure shows a similar trend. 

"Terrible damage to children is being done in our name," Clinton shared in an X post on Wednesday, along with data showing the Trump administration has so far detained 6,200 children, with an average of 226 children held a day. 

Clinton’s criticism lands against a historical record that complicates the attack, because federal data from the 1990s showed hundreds of juveniles in custody on an average day under former President Clinton as immigration enforcement toughened.

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The Clinton administration's Immigration and Naturalization Service, a former agency within the Department of Justice, detained 4,136 unaccompanied illegal juveniles in fiscal year 2000 for longer than a 72-hour period, according to a Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General (OIG) report published in 2001. About 400 to 500 children were held in custody on an average day that same year, the report continued. 

In 1996, former President Clinton signed the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, two laws that expanded immigration enforcement by broadening mandatory detention and speeding up removals.

The data Clinton referenced in her tweet came from the Marshall Project, a nonprofit news outlet that reports on the criminal justice system, and outlined detainee figures during the second Trump administration.

"ICE does not target children or separate families," a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson told Fox News Digital on Wednesday when asked about Clinton's post. "Parents are asked if they want to be removed with their children, or ICE will place the children with a safe person the parent designates. This is consistent with past administrations’ immigration enforcement."

Clinton's tweet followed her appearance at the Munich Security Conference in February, when she said there's a "legitimate reason" to have a debate on immigration policies, adding that it "went too far."

"It's been disruptive and destabilizing, and it needs to be fixed in a humane way with secure borders that don't torture and kill people, and with a strong family structure, because that is at the base of civilization," said the former 2016 presidential candidate.

Following the influx of over 18 million illegal immigrants under the Biden administration, according to the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), DHS says it has stopped the exploitation of 450,000 unaccompanied children. 

"Many of the children who came across the border unaccompanied were allowed to be placed with sponsors who were smugglers and sex traffickers," the DHS spokesperson said. "The Trump administration has located more than 145,000 of these children in person in the United States through visits and door knocks."

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Fox News Digital reached out to the offices of Bill and Hillary Clinton.