Over the past several weeks, the Trump administration has taken several steps that indicate that it will soon be pursuing immigration enforcement against some of the country’s most vulnerable children. Two weeks ago, Reuters reported on an administration memo that outlined a new effort by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to target unaccompanied children—those who arrive in the US without a parent or legal guardian. The memo outlined a four-phase implementation plan, according to Reuters, but did not indicate a start date for enforcement operations.
The memo is one of many recent actions taken by the administration to prepare to deport unaccompanied children and the families that sponsor them. These include an agreement between ICE and the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) to share unaccompanied children’s personal data, and an attempt to cut funding for legal services for unaccompanied children before public pressure led the administration to reverse course. Last week, the Department of Justice sought to drop its case against Southwest Key Programs, which operates 29 ORR shelters across Texas, Arizona, and California. The case alleges systemic failure by Southwest Key to protect children as young as five from sexual abuse.
As WRC discussed in a prior blog, these changes are deeply harmful to some of the most vulnerable members of our society. The data-sharing provisions allow ICE to target the immigrant families that care for unaccompanied children by using the information they provide to ORR to detain and deport them. If funding for legal services had been eliminated as planned, 26,000 unaccompanied children, including infants, would have been forced to go to court alone and represent themselves, a surreal and senseless outcome.
Likely because of the chaotic environment, the moves against unaccompanied children have only partially registered with the American public. But a broad strategy is taking shape. This latest memo would further target unaccompanied children and their sponsor families by directing ICE to track down unaccompanied children and potentially deport them. Like so many of the administration’s efforts to lay the groundwork for mass deportations, the memo speaks in the false language of protecting migrants; in this case claiming that the surveillance and targeting of unaccompanied children is necessary to ensure they are not victims of human trafficking or other forms of exploitation.
According to Reuters, ICE will focus its enforcement efforts on three priorities: “flight risks,” “public safety,” and—most ambiguously—“border security.” Subsequent reporting by NBC News added more detail, including that ICE will target unaccompanied children whose sponsors did not answer the phone for 30-day well-being checks after reunification (answering the 30-day calls is not a requirement for sponsors).
The Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC) is concerned that the “border security” priority group could be a catchall and include all unaccompanied children. The memo’s use of the term “flight risk” is also concerning. ORR has long identified the small number of children who are likely to leave shelters without authorization or skip court dates. But the memo’s “flight risk” category is much larger, because it includes children who have been reunified with non-relative sponsors—about 10% of all unaccompanied children last year. There is no evidence that unaccompanied children placed with non-relative sponsors are particularly likely to fail to appear in immigration court.
The ICE directive Reuters describes, to “locate, make contact, and serve immigration documents as appropriate” to unaccompanied children, would amount to little more than the serving of legal papers. NBC frames the operation differently. Calling the plans “a nationwide operation to locate and potentially deport children,” the article implies a possibility in which ICE agents serving papers are expected to detain children or their undocumented sponsors or household members. Tom Homan, the Trump Administration’s “border czar,” has at least once already threatened immigrant families with placing their children in halfway houses.
The Trump administration is choosing to create a climate of fear and policies that could harm children. Most unaccompanied children will demonstrate that they have the legal right to stay in the US. For unaccompanied children and their sponsors, policies targeting unaccompanied children for immigration enforcement will slow recovery from previous traumas, increase stress at home, exacerbate behavioral health challenges, and lead to learning challenges in school—if their parents are not too afraid to keep them enrolled.
WRC documented the harms of immigration enforcement on unaccompanied children during the first Trump administration. We worry about a repeat of policies that undermine the well-being of some of the most vulnerable members of our society. The US should support unaccompanied children to settle into family lives and a community, secure legal representation, and attend school, not traumatize them further. Children should always be treated as children. WRC will continue to monitor harms to migrant children and advocate for policies that protect their welfare. We urge Congress to provide oversight and ensure that our government prioritizes the safety and health of all children. We can and must protect our children.