Amelia and her children belong to a growing number of families separated by the massive deportations of undocumented immigrants, whose children born in the United States end up in the custody of the departments of Social Services and Child Protection agencies.

A mother-of-four who illegally entered the United States has spent three-and-a-half years fighting to get her children back after she was detained as an illegal immigrant in 2008.

Amelia Reyes Jimenez lost her son and three daughters, the youngest just three months old, when officials raided her Phoenix apartment.

Now, she waits for news on her custody appeal from Guadalajara, Mexico, while her children, who no longer speak Spanish, await possible adoption across the border in Arizona.

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Jimenez said police were waiting for her at the family's Phoenix apartment to arrest her for child endangerment because she left her 13-year-old disabled son home alone.

The mother said she thought the boy was with his father and their two older daughters but he had taken the girls out and left their son at the apartment alone.

When police asked if she had papers she confessed she was illegal, and was handcuffed.

She pleaded guilty to the misdemeanour and was taken to Eloy Detention Center, 70mi southeast of Phoenix.

In family court, Jimenez was unable to meet the conditions to regain custody of her children, as a judge determined 'no services [were] available, due to mother's incarceration', according to the network.

Restricted from attending the hearings, her parental rights were terminated and she was unable to see her children - three of whom are U.S. citizens - for two years

After her time was up at the detention facility, Ms Jimenez was dropped off across the border, in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico.

For those two years Ms Jimenez fought her deportation. She applied for a visa twice on the grounds that the separation from her children was harming them. Both times she lost.

As ABC reports, she now works in Guadalajara, where she working nights on a factory assembly line making cell phones.

Ms Jimenez's son and three daughters, meanwhile, are living in foster care in Phoenix, and are awaiting possible adoption.

The case is being appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court, although a trial date has yet to be set.

Each morning, she told the network, she wakes and waits for the phone to ring with news from her lawyer.

But she is not alone.

A recent study by the group Applied Research Center (ARC) obtained by ABC shows that at least 5,100 children of detained immigrant were in the U.S. foster care system as of last summer, any many at risk of permanent separation because of deportation like Ms Jimenez.

The report did not specify how many children in similar cases had been adopted.

However, Rinku Sen, executive director of ARC, referred to the situation as a 'systematic problem', occurring in 'multiple states and multiple counties', despite the Obama administrations Immigrations Enforcement Policy, which says that officers are urged to consider family relationships prior to deportation.

In a statement to ABC News, Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Brian Hale said that, 'as outlined in the agency's June 2010 Civil Enforcement Priorities memo, ICE will typically not detain individuals who are the primary caretakers of children, unless the individual is legally subjected to mandatory detention based on the severity of their criminal or immigration history.'