Immigrant Children Locked In Adult Detention For Months, Reports ICE [VIDEO]

Under current federal policy, unaccompanied immigrant minors are not allowed to stay at adult facilities for more than 72 hours and if necessary must be transferred into proper facilities after that time frame has passed.

Data from the National Immigration Justice Center based in Chicago obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request, more than 1,300 minors were kept at adult detention centers for three days or more -- sometimes months -- between 2008 and 2012, the Huffington Post reported. The data is prompting questions about the way the Obama Administration is handling a seemingly neverending list of deportations, clogging up the U.S. immigration system.

At least 1,366 minors, some 14 years or younger, have stayed at adult facilities for extended periods of times in the years prior to Sept. 30, 2012. Among those minors, 371 spent more than three months jailed while 15 spent six months or more in the facilities. Minors are often placed in solitary confinement in these centers to protect them from other inmates, the Arizona Star reported.

"Unaccompanied minors are carefully kept in staging facilities away from the general population and minors are only held in ICE custody when accompanied by their parents in a facility designed to house families," a statement from ICE read.

Both ICE and Homeland Security conceded that these detention periods violated federal standards. Homeland Security said, however, that it puts the utmost responsibility into caring for the well-being of detained minors.

"Unaccompanied minors are not permitted to be detained by ICE for any longer than is necessary for HHS (Health and Human Services) to take custody of the minor," Peter Boogaard, spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement.

The numbers could actually be higher than reported as the numbers only surveyed 30 of the estimated 250 detention facilities in the U.S. Around 3,800 minors are currently being held in juvenile facilities across the country, according to the Women's Refugee Commission, a New York City-based organization that monitors how women and children are treated by the immigration system and in detention facilities.

Centers for minors provide schooling and access to immigration lawyers. The facilities are safer for minors as only youths are detained there. However, the system has become crowded as the number of detainees has ballooned while undocumented immigrants from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala are making up higher numbers of the population.

"Nobody has seen where these kids are being held because we haven't known," said Jennifer Podkul of the Women's Refugee Commission. "These numbers are high, and we don't know what kind of services these kids are getting."

Meanwhile, the Obama Administration is expected to hit two million deportations by 2014. This number surpasses all total deportations prior to 1997.