WASHINGTON — Advocates became uneasy when immigration agents recently began launching welfare checks on young people who had arrived at the border that was not accompanied by their parents.
Stories of these unpublished visits have appeared across the country. Agents attempting to access two primary schools in Los Angeles. The agent shows up “five deeply armed men” at the home of a 19-year-old immigration lawyer in Virginia. The agent interviews a terrifying 16-year-old Honduras girl at her uncle’s house in Washington.
Homeland Security officials say the welfare checks are part of an ongoing effort to ensure that unaccompanied children are “safe, abused, abused, and sex trafficking.”
Immigration advocates say several visits have led to children being forced to leave the country with deported parents, or being taken away from sponsors and placed in federal custody.
Supporters point to the case of 17-year-old Hongjuran from Hawaii, when his brother was detained by federal agents. The boy was taken to an unaccompanied youth facility in California.
“This is just a small part of the administration’s course that bets on their claims that it would make immigration as a whole so difficult. They think people will leave and not come to the US.
Fear of welfare checks “driving people underground and increasing exploitation and human trafficking,” Smears said. “And they do that with this perverse story saying they care about their children. But what they’re doing is destroying the lives of these children.”
The Trump administration is reviewing around 450,000 children who crossed the US-Mexican border without parents during President Biden’s term
Children not accompanied by parents will be placed under the control of the Refugee Resettlement Bureau, which is under the Ministry of Health and Human Services. This department should screen for sponsors of children, usually adults who volunteer to care for their parents and other relatives.
Shortly after President Trump took office, his administration tracked unaccompanied children, investigated whether they were exposed to human trafficking, and developed a multi-agency plan to deport removable people. The Internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement Memo obtained by The Times details the four-stage operation.
The memo shows that agents should prioritize youth who did not compete in immigration hearings, those who were unable to contact them since the government was released to sponsors, those who are deemed a threat to public safety, and those who have been deported orders.
The agency also closely watches young people released from federal custody by non-blooded sponsors, including so-called supersponsors who are taking three or more unaccompanied children.
Sponsorship programs have been plagued by problems in recent years. A report from the Federal Watch Office last year shows that the federal government has failed to properly inspect some sponsors. Thousands of children who were rapidly released from government shelters were later exploited by large corporations.
Last month, the Federal Jury indicted a man on allegations that he had seduced a 14-year-old girl from Guatemala into the United States, falsely claiming that she was his sister to gain custody as a sponsor.
The Associated Press reported that around 100 children have been removed from sponsors this year and have returned to federal custody.
Sponsorship reviews under the Trump administration are guided by two branches of two ice, Enforcement and Removal Operations, or ERO, and Homeland Security Investigations, or HSI.
In addition to fighting human trafficking, the effort aims to identify candidates for deportation. Calling unaccompanied children “UAC,” the memo states: “ERO officers should remember to enforce final removal orders if possible. The HSI pursues the crime options of the UAC who committed the crime.”
The Department of Homeland Security and Health and Welfare did not respond to requests for comment.
Immigration attorneys say the agents have tried to intimidate minors for the past two months.
In one example in California, a minor client answered the door and found an agent in casual wear and asked if their mother was working. Another family reported to the lawyer that the HSI agent arrived while the minor was at school, but the agent returned four times in a day to find students.
Karina Ramos, managing lawyer for the Los Angeles-based Immigration Defence Corps law center, said tactics will be sponsoring risks that lack legal recognition to be in the country or live on mixed stars.
“If you know that immigration officers can sometimes question their status, it will definitely have a calm impact on sponsors,” she said.
According to those with knowledge of the case, the Hawaiian teenager’s case began on April 9 when his brother was arrested on suspicion of illegal entry on a misdemeanor.
The teenager was in a country without companions and previously had federal custody in Texas. He was released to his brother’s care in 2023. If the teenager was arrested last month, the agent considered whether he could banish him along with his brother, according to someone with knowledge of the case.
After his brother was arrested, the 17-year-old was placed in a facility for unaccompanied youths in California. Hawaii does not have resettlement facilities for refugees.
Before he was transported to California, a teacher who knew that the students had tried to help him release, according to local supporters and Honolulu citizen Beat. The teacher carried documents indicating that if he was released by her, his aunt could take his custody.
Advocates said there are intersecting operations in Hawaii – welfare checks for unaccompanied children and enforcement measures against foreign immigration. At least four immigrant children in two separate cases were recently taken away with parents who were targeted for deportation, supporters said.
“It never happens in the best interest of a child to have parallel directives to remove adults from children,” said Mary Miller Flowers, director of policy and legislative affairs at the Young Immigrants Center for Children’s Rights. “So it feels like an e-musical representation of executive action.”
In other parts of the country, young immigrants and their adult sponsors are working on what welfare checks can spell out to them.
In Houston, Alexa Sendukas, an attorney for the Galveston Houston Immigration Representative Project, said 21 clients had undergone welfare checks in recent weeks. The person who lets an agent in the house tells her that the agent walked from room to room, asking questions and taking photos.
At last week’s meeting, HSI agents told Sendukas that they had rescued two children from human trafficking situations in the Houston area and found a sponsor producing child exploitation material. But she remains skeptical.
“I’ve heard of examples of Hawaii’s incidents,” she said, adding that she supports the welfare checks gathering information that can be used in the future. Referring to the ice notes, she said, “The guidance suggests a multiphase initiative. What will the next stage look like?”
In San Diego, federal agents recently conducted a wellness check at the residence of a girl represented by immigration lawyer Ian Serero. She is in the process of receiving a special immigrant boy status, he said.
The day after the wellness check, the girl was visiting her parents who lived elsewhere, so federal agents stopped them while driving to the church and detained them for several hours, Serero said.
The parents have no criminal history, but they were undocumented and their status was probably known to officials, Serero said. Neither the girl nor her parents were in custody, he said.
Serero said he found the timing of his parents’ suspects detained. “I think they used wellness checks to get information about their parents,” he said.
Smeers, a former Health and Human Services official, said the justification for public safety and border security mentioned in the ICE memo regarding tracking non-accompanied children is the same justification used by federal official and mastermind Stephen Miller, the segregation of thousands of families at the tropical border during President Trump’s first term.
“Americans should be galvanized against this, just like family separation at the border,” she said.
Castillo reported from Gomez in Washington and Los Angeles.
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