The Trump administration launches offensive for deporting undocumented minors who have entered the US only

Trump administration’s repression on migrants without documents It also extends to children who have only arrived in the country as one of his deportation targets. While the government claims that the priority of its campaign is to expel the criminals, the directives from the Executive Branch contradicts its rhetoric. According to a memory obtained by ReutersImigration and customs execution agents (ICE) will also follow unaccompanied minors to determine if they will call them in court or deport, if they receive an expulsion order.

According to official data, over 600,000 children crossed the US-Mexico border, unaccompanied by their parents of 2019 Against an increase in illegal crossings over recent years. A report last year estimated that the authorities have Loss of about 32,000 of them Because they missed the judicial data, although the real number is expected to be much higher, because about 290,000 did not receive a court date.

“As the administration announces a plan to accelerate the procedures for hundreds of thousands of children whose documents seem to have been lost or wrong by the internal security department in the past, they should not undermine the right of children to participate in their legal procedures by shipping their deportations or denial of their legal representation. The deprivation of the children of legal protection and deportations that accelerate does not make them more vulnerable to threats such as the exploitation or traffic and even the damages that are intended to be protected, ”said Shaina Aber, executive director of the Acion Center for Justice, an organization that represent some 26,000 unaccompanied children.

Risk prevention minors falling into the hands of human trafficking networks It is one of the reasons why the Government offered to justify the search for children. However, migrant defense organizations believe that it is contradictory that if the goal is to protect children, initiatives like last week – that eliminated legal representation for children in immigration courts – are adopted, a controversial measure that caused strong criticisms from the lawyers of the child’s rights and has triggered a flood of protest letters to Congress. Three days later, the administration returned and the order was revoked.

According to the new memo, ICE officers will determine “how to locate, make contact and serve immigration documents, as the case may be, for individual targets, when applying” that involves non -enacted children.

ICE says he has compiled data from several sources and classifies children in three groups: “flight risk”, “public safety” and “border security”. The order is for the agents to focus on children considered the “flight risk”, including those who have deportation orders for missing judgments and those issued to sponsors who are not blood relatives.

Once the minors are located by the US border patrol, they are taught at the Refugee Resettlement Office (ORR), which is part of the Human Health and Services Department.

From the orr, they are transferred to relatives or sponsors, if they agree to take them. In many cases, those who take them are also migrants without documents, in the center of Trump’s mass deportation plans.

“Often, unaccompanied children are placed in houses where relatives or other persons who do not have legal status live, are unauthorized immigrants. Saying that he is trying to find these children could actually be an attempt to locate other people in these homes, “said Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a lawyer at the Migration Policy Institute (MPI).

On February 14, the administration ordered that all adults residing in the placement houses be fingerprint and their divided immigration status. Immigration experts say the move will hurt children, discouraging families from taking them. They also discourage them from presenting for the judicial data, which makes them easier to be deported.

“During the first Trump administration, when they did the same, the children ended up detecting, because their sponsors were afraid to raise and pick them up,” explains Bush-Joseph.

In 2024, there were 98,536 children in Custiah, decreasing from 118,938 in 2023 and 12,904 in 2022, but much higher than the annual average during Trump’s first term, which in 2019 alone exceeded 50,000.

Thirty -two percent of unaccompanied minors who arrived in 2024 came from Guatemala, 20% of Mexico, 20% of Honduras and 8% of El Salvador. Families send unaccompanied children to the United States to escape poverty and violence in their countries, hoping for a better future.

Thousands of deportation orders are issued for minors every year, but their deportation process is slower than adults, because before reaching an immigration judge, they must go through a USCIS administrative procedure (services citizenship and immigration of the United States). Due to the delay of the courts, which have almost 4,000 pending cases, the deportation procedures last on average 1,200 days and many of those who have entered as minors become adults during the process. One third of the children who crossed the border last year were over 17 years old.

If minors are not taken by relatives, they remain in public shelters. As soon as they turn 18, they can be transferred to ice, which increases the chances of being detained and deported.

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