Trump administration toughens restrictions on families trying to reunite with migrant children
The rules have put some undocumented families in a desperate situation, leaving children who crossed the border unaccompanied languishing for months in the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the advocates say.
Among the raft of new rules implemented since January is a requirement that families provide proof of their income source, show a U.S. identification and in many cases take a DNA test. Scheduling a test can take weeks in some states.
One Guatemalan mother living in California had been told in March that she would soon be reunited with her children, ages 7 and 14, who had been detained at the border without a legal custodian in January. Then new policies required the identification. In California, the only ID undocumented immigrants can obtain is a driver's license, and the mother had never driven.
'She had to learn how to drive to apply,' said Molly Chew, project director at Vecina, a nonprofit whose ReUnite project works nationwide to help expedite the process for families with detained immigrant children. 'She is terrified of driving.'
Chew said she is requesting an exemption, but now the Office of Refugee Resettlement is also requiring the DNA test. The mother took the test and has been waiting for the results for a month.
'These families are put in an impossible bind,' Chew said. They're being asked to 'submit documents they legally can't obtain, comply with procedures that expose them to immigration enforcement and wait indefinitely while their children remain in detention. They are being systematically set up to fail.'
If a sponsor can't produce a tax return or pay stubs for the last 60 consecutive days, they are being advised to turn in a note by their employer on official company letterhead, and case managers must be able to speak with a supervisor or human resources.
Neither the Office of Refugee Resettlement nor the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the office, responded to requests from The Times. In the past, the administration has said that tight security restrictions are needed to protect children.
'Safe and timely release must promote public safety and ensure that sponsors are able to provide for the physical and mental well-being of children,' the agency's online policy states.
The changes leave many feeling vulnerable, as the Trump administration is stripping other services, including access to lawyers, for migrant children amid a broader immigration crackdown.
'What we're witnessing isn't just bureaucratic dysfunction — it's a calculated strategy to prolong child detention, discourage and impede reunification, and extract as much personal data as possible for future immigration enforcement,' Chew said.
As of April 4, there were 2,223 children in ORR care, according to the agency's website, a significant drop from January, when about 6,200 were in custody. But statistics show that children are staying at the facilities longer.
Children in ORR facilities have on average been there for 175 days as of March, compared with 67 days in December, according to ORR data. Advocates fear that immigration detention is harming children's mental health.
It's unclear exactly why children are staying for longer and why, but some researchers believe it is directly related to the administration's stricter policy.
'We can look to the policy changes to make guesses about why its more difficult to release a child to a vetted sponsor,' said Jonathan Beier, associate director of research and evaluation for the Unaccompanied Children Program at Acacia Center for Justice, a group that coordinates legal services for undocumented immigrants.
Other ORR data suggest that rate in which children are being released to sponsored has sharply slowed.
'Every day our team hears from distressed children, crying as they lose hope of ever seeing their families again,' said Marion Donovan-Kaloust, director of legal services at Immigrant Defenders Law Center, who works with immigrant children. 'Requiring a child's own parent to show proof of income or submit to lengthy and invasive DNA testing even when there is no reason to question the parent-child relationship with proper documentation is already resulting in a new family separation crisis.'
Another Guatemalan family whom Chew worked with was told last month that they would be reunited with their 7-year-old boy, only to be told days later they that had to comply with new ID requirements. The mother couldn't legally obtain acceptable identification in the state she lives in.
'A 7-year-old can't understand why he's still in custody, can't understand why he hasn't been released to his mom when he had been told that his release was imminent,' she said. 'He told his mom, through tears and an incredibly emotional phone call, that she really just must not want him after all.'
Children detained at the border are often fleeing persecution, violence or poverty in their home countries, and are trying to reunite with family who had come earlier. They are especially vulnerable to trafficking, exploitation and abuse.
With no parent or legal custodian, unaccompanied minors are transferred to ORR within 72 hours. Before these new rules, sponsors could recover them after they proved their relationship and were vetted to ensure that they could provide for the child's physical and mental well-being.
According to ORR policies, they made sure children were released 'in a safe, efficient, manner without unnecessary delay.'
'I think it will be very difficult for a family to come forward in this climate,' said Nerea Woods, an attorney who works with unaccompanied minors.
ORR has rescinded its policy of not sharing information on sponsors with immigration agencies and law enforcement, and a wave of wellness checks on formerly unaccompanied minors has made many families skittish.
'We're obviously very skeptical about the true purpose of these wellness checks,' she said. 'Are they using that information to really just get to undocumented sponsors or undocumented people that are living in the home?'
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