An ICE memo that leaked this week directs the agency to work up plans to arrest and deport kids who entered the country without their parents. The deportation plans reportedly focus on children with removal orders, including tens of thousands of cases where a child was ordered removed solely due to missing a court date. The plan also includes introducing removal charges in immigration court against children who do not already have removal orders.
ICE’s mass child deportation plan will presumably rely in part on records from the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), the agency tasked with caring for unaccompanied minors and releasing them to sponsors—many of whom are parents or other relatives. The Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Health and Human Services have reinstituted policies from the first Trump administration, including allowing ICE access to ORR’s database of information regarding unaccompanied children and their sponsors. The agencies will also require fingerprinting of all adults, not just sponsors, in any household where a child will be released.
Similar policies under the prior Trump administration were challenged in court because they deterred sponsors from coming forward to care for children out of fear that doing so would subject them to immigration enforcement. This led to children being detained for longer periods of time, at the expense of their wellbeing. ICE’s use of ORR data for enforcement purposes will again chill sponsors from stepping forward to care for children because they fear being caught up in ICE’s dragnet.
The administration’s purported justification for seeking to deport children is ensuring they are not victims of human trafficking or other exploitation. But targeting children—including the very young—for arrest and deportation will upend their lives while doing little to combat child trafficking and exploitation. A child’s failure to show up to an immigration court hearing is not, on its own, an indication that they have been trafficked. It’s much more likely a sign that they do not have an attorney . If the administration really cares about the trafficking of migrant children, it should pursue traffickers , not children.
The Trump administration’s overarching mass deportation plans also spell disaster for millions of other children. Lawfully present immigrant children, as well as the 5.5 million U.S.-born children who live in households with at least one undocumented resident, are also at risk of family separation and other trauma
