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Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officials are seeking out unaccompanied immigrant children in operations nationwide with a view to deporting them or pursuing criminal cases against them or adult sponsors sheltering them legally in the US, according to sources and an Ice document.
The moves are sparking fears of a crackdown on such children and prompting alarm about what one critic called “backdoor family separation”.
In recent months, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Ice have begun engaging in “welfare checks” on children who arrived in the US alone, usually via the US-Mexico border, to “ensure that they are safe and not being exploited”, according to a DHS spokesperson.
Although DHS is characterizing the welfare visits as benevolent, an internal Ice document accessed by the National Immigration Project advocacy group and then shared shows Ice is also seeking out children who came into the US alone as immigrants – and their US-based sponsors – for immigration enforcement purposes and/or to pursue criminal prosecutions. The recent operations and document confirm a February report from Reuters, that the Trump administration has directed Ice to track down and deport this group.
Meanwhile, in Donald Trump’s second term, legal services provided to unaccompanied minors have been slashed and funds are not flowing despite court intervention. And the federal agency monitoring unaccompanied immigrant children has begun sharing sensitive data with Ice.
The Ice document shows “ it’s not just about checking in on kids, making sure that they can account for them and that they’re not being exploited”, said Michelle Méndez, the director of legal resources and training for the National Immigration Project. “It shows they have other goals, and the goals are criminalization of the kid or criminalization of the sponsor. It’s backdoor family separation.”
In addition to verifying that the children are not trafficked or exploited, the Ice document shows officials are also gathering intelligence to see whether the children are a “flight risk” or a “threat to public safety” or whether they are viable to be deported. Immigration experts and attorneys say such “fact finding” operations by Ice to track unaccompanied minors are still in their early stages.
“It’s enforcement. It’s in the name of saying that they’re pursuing children’s welfare. They seem to be actually trying to conduct an enforcement operation,” said Shaina Aber, the executive director of the Acacia Center for Justice. “It seems very clear that what they are actually doing is gathering intelligence on the family.”
For advocates, one of the most troubling aspects, as stated in the document, is that Ice officials will target children with alleged “gang or terrorist ties/activities”. In recent months, the Trump administration has been engaging in arrests, expulsions and deportations of immigrants – mostly Salvadorians and Venezuelans – accused of having links to gangs deemed to be terrorist organizations. The administration has used flimsy evidence to justify many of the expulsions and deportations under the controversial, rarely used 1798 Alien Enemies Act, or AEA, leading to a showdown between the administration and the judiciary and a threat to the rule of law.
“As long as the government has some nebulous allegation, they know an immigration judge will likely order the person removed,” Méndez said.
Earlier this month, Ice officials visited a 16-year-old girl in Washington state for a “welfare check”. During the visit, which was first reported by the Spokesman-Review, the frightened girl messaged and called Samuel Smith, the director of immigrant legal aid at Manzanita House, the organization that is representing the girl in her immigration case.
“Both the text messages sent and the tone of communication when talking on the phone, was of a child who was incredibly scared,” Smith said. “She had no idea what was going on and was worried that her life would be flipped upside down.”
The Washington Post reported this month that other federal agencies have also been conducting welfare checks and reporting information to Ice.
“I can appreciate the publicly stated goal, but I don’t necessarily believe it,” Smith said.
According to the Ice document and a federal law enforcement source with knowledge of the operations, two offices within Ice are conducting the unaccompanied immigrant children operations: enforcement and removal operations (ERO) and homeland security investigations (HSI). The former, ERO, runs Ice’s deportation system while HSI runs mostly international criminal investigations into drug smuggling, human trafficking and fraud, but they are increasingly working together in this administration.
According to the Ice document, officials from ERO and HSI will coordinate “on pursuing UAC”, which stands for “unaccompanied alien children”, while ERO will verifiy that “immigration enforcement action is taken”, if necessary.
“ERO officers should remember they are to enforce final orders of removal, where possible, and HSI will pursue criminal options for UAC who have committed crimes,” the document says.
Becky Wolozin, a senior attorney at the National Center for Youth Law, finds it “difficult to reconcile the alleged well-meaning intention of these visits with the reality of the terror and trauma they have caused for children and families across the country”.
“Given the intent articulated in this memo, families have well-founded fear surrounding these visits,” Wolozin added.
Unaccompanied immigrant children who reach the US border are apprehended by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and then placed in custody of the office of refugee resettlement (ORR), under the department of Health and Human Services (HHS), while their immigration case proceeds. ORR will place children in shelters and later, if there is a sponsor available, children are placed under a sponsor’s care. Typically, sponsors are the children’s relatives in the US; at times, they are unrelated adults. The sponsors complete an assessment process and undergo a background check, according to a report from the Congressional Research Service.
For years, ORR has operated independently of DHS, in an attempt to address the immigration of children in a humane manner, rather than through law enforcement.
Unaccompanied minors then go through lengthy proceedings and in the meantime enroll in school.
Some children released to ORR sponsors have been found to have been trafficked and exploited.
“There are instances of trafficking in the United States,” Smith said. “But it’s the exception, not the rule here. The vast majority are in placements that are supportive, in a good place for them to be able to live.”
For years, Trump allies have pushed the narrative that unaccompanied immigrant children have been trafficked, placing blame on the Biden administration. They have pointed to a DHS inspector general report that found that Ice was not able to adequately track unaccompanied minors under their care. Experts point to a bureaucratic paperwork backlog by Ice, saying most of those children are safe, with relatives or sponsors.
“The previous administration allowed many of these children who came across the border unaccompanied to be placed with sponsors who were actually smugglers and sex traffickers,” the DHS assistant secretary, Tricia McLaughlin, said in a statement. “Unlike the previous administration, President Trump and Secretary [Kristi] Noem take the responsibility to protect children seriously and will continue to work with federal law enforcement to reunite children with their families.”
Since the Trump administration returned to office, HHS has cut legal services for unaccompanied children. There is currently a legal fight at play, in an attempt to restore legal resources for unaccompanied minors who are attempting to stay in the US.
During the first Trump administration, ORR began to share data with Ice regarding immigrant children and their sponsors. Similarly at that time, immigration officials arrested 170 undocumented immigrants who tried to become sponsors for children in government custody.
Although the Biden administration stopped the data-sharing practice, the new Trump White House has again begun the process of information sharing between agencies. A new Trump-era change now also allows for ORR to share the legal status of children’s sponsors with Ice, sparking fears that the information will be used to arrest and deport undocumented sponsors.
ORR did not respond to a request for comment.
“I worry about the trauma the kids are going through. There is a climate of fear for immigrants in this country right now,” Aber said. “The amount of trauma that this administration seems willing to put kids through is really upsetting.”
The new acting director of ORR is Angie Salazar, a former Ice agent under HSI. Salazar took over the role in March after the prior acting director of ORR, another Ice official, was ousted from the role.
