Immigration authorities are reportedly targeting a new demographic in an attempt to meet the lofty deportation goals demanded by President Donald Trump: unaccompanied migrant children.
The Trump administration last week ordered immigration agents to chase down children who crossed the border without their parents, according to an internal ICE memo obtained by Reuters.
The memo, headlined “Unaccompanied Alien Children Joint Initiative Field Implementation,” outlines a four-phase plan reportedly aimed at ensuring that children are not exploited. Though the memo did not provide a start date for the operations, the planning phase began on Jan. 27.
The directive sorts children into three categories: “flight risk,” “public safety,” and “border security.” Agents were reportedly instructed to focus on the “flight risks,” including those with deportation orders for missing court hearings or released to sponsors who were not blood relatives.
Children would be served a notice to appear in immigration court or deported if they had any pending deportation orders, the memo stated.
The Trump administration has tightened its vetting of sponsors by requiring background checks to include fingerprints from sponsors and adult household members.
Mellissa Harper, a former ICE official who now leads the Office of Refugee Resettlement—a subsidiary of the Health Department—told staff last week that the agency plans to use DNA tests to establish familial ties, according to a source who spoke to Reuters.
Harper also said ICE was pursuing some 247,000 tips and referring cases to the FBI linked to fraud, trafficking, and the smuggling of unaccompanied minors.
The Trump administration has reportedly expanded its access to the ORR’s database of children and their sponsors.
Over 600,000 unaccompanied migrant children have crossed the border into the U.S. since 2019, according to government data. Tens of thousands have been ordered deported over that same period, including 31,000 who missed court hearings.
Border czar Tom Homan earlier complained that ICE agents were struggling to locate undocumented migrant adults.
“It is hard because rather than one man arresting one bad guy in a jail, we’ve got to send a whole team to the field to find someone that doesn’t want to be found,” he said in a CNN interview last week. “It’s hard work, but we’re not giving up. We’re coming.”
Even after sending out hundreds of ICE agents to round up migrants, operations at the start of February only resulted in a handful of arrests.
Some migrants who were arrested have already been released due to space constraints.
