Washington DC:
In the next step of the crackdown against illegal immigration in the United States, President Donald Trump’s administration has reportedly directed immigration agents to track down hundreds of thousands of migrant children who entered America without their parents and deport them.
Expanding President Trump’s mass deportation effort, an internal memo issued by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) outlines an unprecedented push to target migrant children who crossed the border illegally as unaccompanied minors, according to a report by news agency Reuters.
What ICE Memo Say?
Per the report, the memo laid out four phases of implementation, beginning with a planning phase on January 27, though it did not provide a start date for enforcement operations.
The memo, headlined “Unaccompanied Alien Children Joint Initiative Field Implementation,” said the initiative aims to ensure that children are not victims of human trafficking or other forms of exploitation. It noted that the children would be served a notice to appear in immigration court or deported if deportation orders were pending against them.
In the memo, ICE said it had collected data from a number of sources on unaccompanied minors and sorted them into three priority groups, “flight risk”, “public safety” and “border security.”
It directed agents to focus on children deemed “flight risks” – including those ordered deported for missing court hearings and those released to sponsors who are not blood relatives.
Individual ICE field offices will determine “how to best locate, make contact, and serve immigration documents as appropriate for individual targets when conducting enforcement actions,” involving unaccompanied children, the memo said.
Because the children often live in households with adults without authorization to be in the United States, their addresses could also help ICE boost its overall arrest numbers.
ICE reportedly uses several databases and government records to track down targets. According to the US government’s data, over 600,000 immigrant children have crossed the US-Mexico border without a parent or legal guardian since 2019, as the number of migrants caught crossing illegally reached record levels.
Tens of thousands of such children have also been ordered deported over the same time frame, including more than 31,000 for missing court hearings, immigration court data show.
Trump’s Crackdown Against Illegal Immigration
During his first term, Trump introduced a “zero tolerance” policy that led to the separation of migrant children from their parents at the border. The children were sent to children’s shelters run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), a government agency housed within the Department of Health and Human Services, while their parents were detained or deported.
The separation of families, including babies from nursing mothers, was met with widespread international outrage. Trump halted the policy in 2018, though up to 1,000 children may still remain separated from their parents, according to Lee Gelernt, the lead American Civil Liberties Union attorney in a related legal challenge.
Unaccompanied children began arriving in large numbers a decade ago due to violence and economic instability in their home countries – and US immigration policies that enabled them to enter and often remain.
The majority are from Central America and Mexico. Some migrated to join their parents already in the United States, while many travelled with family members or smugglers.
America’s Immigration Laws
Under America’s immigration law, migrants who have exhausted their legal options to stay can be removed, even if they are children. However, the US government has limited resources and typically prioritizes arresting adults with criminal records.
From ORR custody, children are released to sponsors, usually parents or relatives, as immigration authorities weigh their cases to remain in the country.
Trump’s border czar Tom Homan has repeatedly claimed that some 300,000 unaccompanied children went missing during Joe Biden’s presidency and were at risk of trafficking and exploitation. Beyond initial follow-up calls, ORR was not obligated to track the whereabouts of the children after they left custody. Many are now adults or living with their parents.
During his first administration, Trump used data gathered to vet sponsors of unaccompanied children to target them for arrests. Since taking office on January 20, he has again taken steps to tighten vetting of sponsors.
These include requiring sponsors and adult household members to submit fingerprints for background checks, according to guidance issued last week.
The Trump administration has also expanded its access to ORR’s database of children and their sponsors, two sources familiar with the matter said.