In April of last year, when her mother dropped by federal immigration headquarters in Manhattan to complete some paperwork, 8-year-old Virginia Feliz became part of a growing tribe of American children who have lost a parent to deportation.

Her mother, Berly, 47, who migrated to the United States illegally a decade ago, went to the immigration office on a routine visit to renew her work authorization. But because an old deportation order had resurfaced, she was quickly clapped into handcuffs, and within hours placed on a plane to her native Honduras, unable to say goodbye to her husband and little girl.

"I'm not happy; I'm sad," said Virginia, who lives in a small Bronx apartment. "Because it's not fair that everybody else has their mom except me." She dropped onto a couch next to her disabled father, Carlos Feliz, an American citizen who was born in the Dominican Republic, declaring that she hates her last name, which means happy in Spanish.

No one keeps track of exactly how many American children were left behind by the record 186,000 noncitizens expelled from the United States last year, or the 887,000 others required to make a "voluntary departure." But immigration experts say there are tens of thousands of children every year who lose a parent to deportation. As the debate over immigration policy heats up, such broken families are troubling people on all sides, and challenging schools and mental health clinics in immigrant neighborhoods.