Some of the ugliest acts from Donald Trump’s first term were directed at the most vulnerable: children. These attacks included the shameful policy of ripping 5,500 weeping migrant children, including nursing infants and toddlers, from the arms of their loved ones. Despite the established traumatic effects of these policies on kids, Trump and Stephen Miller continue to single them out for attack. Immigration Impact’s Rebecca Cassler reports that the Trump administration is looking to carry out a “mass child deportation plan”:
An ICE memo that leaked this week directs the agency to work up plans to arrest and deport kids who entered the country without their parents. The deportation plans reportedly focus on children with removal orders, including tens of thousands of cases where a child was ordered removed solely due to missing a court date. The plan also includes introducing removal charges in immigration court against children who do not already have removal orders.
Rolling Stone’s Peter Wade reports that some minors are being labeled as “flight risks,” while others are being prioritized as “public safety” or “border security.” It’s hard to grasp how Trump and his officials are trying to frame minors as a public safety threat, as this memo appears to be doing, when we know that these are children who are oftentimes running from danger. Many have fled their home countries in order to escape life-or-death situations, like forced gang recruitment. In fact, 2014 data from the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees indicated that nearly 60% of unaccompanied minors had “a viable claim to refugee protections under international law.”
Instead, the Trump administration is only heightening the risks already facing them. “The administration’s purported justification for seeking to deport children is ensuring they are not victims of human trafficking or other exploitation,” Immigration Impact notes. It’s true that in the past, some migrant children have been exploited under despicable schemes. The solution here is to root out and punish those individuals carrying out these heinous crimes, not their victims. “But targeting children—including the very young—for arrest and deportation will upend their lives while doing little to combat child trafficking and exploitation,” as Immigration Impact notes.
The Trump administration’s end goal here is not to protect children and our communities. If that were the case, it would not be diverting critical resources that have been combating human and drug trafficking here at home, or freezing funds for programs supporting victims of online child exploitation and trafficking around the world, as Wired’s Matt Burgess has reported. Instead, this is part of an effort to widen the number of individuals the administration seeks to make deportable, even if they have no criminal record at all – and even if they’re children seeking safety here. Just look at the recent attempt to end funding for legal representation for these same children. Bloomberg’s Frank Wilkinson:
For years, a vast network of nongovernmental organizations has helped these children navigate our byzantine immigration system. This month, arbitrarily and without warning, the Trump administration cut off congressionally authorized funding to that network. On Feb. 18, the Trump administration sent a memo to the Acacia Center for Justice, a government contractor that serves roughly 26,000 children, telling them and their subcontractors to stop providing services.
“We immediately convened our leadership team and started to plan for what this would look like,” Wendy Young, the president of KIND, which provides legal services to migrant children, told me in a telephone interview this week. KIND gets two-thirds of its budget from Acacia. “We immediately decided we would have to furlough staff,” Young said.
Florence Immigrant And Refugee Rights Project, another organization that receives funding to carry out their fundamentally pro-child work, was also impacted. “On Tuesday, we received an alarming stop work order on the services we provide to detained immigrant children, including Know Your Rights presentations and legal education,” the organization wrote at Bluesky on Feb. 21. During a Feb. 19 press call denouncing the Trump administration’s work stop order, Michigan Immigrant Rights Center (MIRC) said some of its clients are so young that attorneys have brought teddy bears to court to help with the stress of attending an immigration hearing that could determine their future.
“MIRC represented a ten-month-old baby – the youngest child taken from a parent during the family separation crisis – and successfully reunited him with his family through the unaccommodated children’s program in 2018, along with hundreds of other kids brought to our state,” Executive Director Susan E. Reed said during the call. “To see the same group of vulnerable children targeted again is the gravest injustice.”
Under public pushback, the Trump administration backtracked on its decision to issue the stop work order. “The Friday notice from the United States Department of Interior obtained by The Associated Press does not explain the Trump administration decision to reinstate the program,” a report said. But Acacia provided some insight, saying that members of the public sent more than 15,000 letters to lawmakers over the course of just 48 hours demanding the reinstatement of critical resources for children. “However, with this stop-work order lifted, our work is far from over – we are in a critical moment to ensure that no child is forced to navigate our immigration system alone,” said Executive Director Shaina Aber.
Despite this hard-fought win by advocates, the need to protect children remains critical. The internal memo exposing the administration’s plan to label minors as “flight risks” and target them for deportation leaked just days after the work stop order walkback. Trump’s mass deportation plans also represent a threat to millions of American citizen children who could be separated from an undocumented parent. Trump is looking to fund mass detention camps and mass deportation by slashing critical programs for working families, with mass deportations standing to only worsen inflation and further raise food costs, which will also hurt children.
And, most recently, the administration plans to line the pockets of private prisons and corporate executives at the expense of children and parents who had the courage to seek new lives here by reviving family detention. Bloomberg Law’s Justin Wise and Suzanne Monyak further reports that Trump’s Justice Department horrifically plans to drop a Biden-era lawsuit “alleging sexual abuse by employees of a company that houses thousands of unaccompanied migrant children and has received billions of dollars in federal grants to operate the facilities”:
The Justice Department alleged in July 2024 that Southwest Key employees sexually abused and harassed children between the ages of 5 and 17 at its shelters over an eight-year span. The company is also accused of failing to properly respond and prevent the abuse in violation of the Fair Housing Act, which bars discrimination in housing.
At least two former Southwest Key employees have also been separately convicted in state and federal courts of sexually abusing migrant children at the facilities.
“This is exactly what we warned about, Trump’s obsession with immigration is indiscriminate and heartless. His administration is once again targeting women and children, separating families and harming our communities,” responded America’s Voice Executive Director Vanessa Cárdenas. “Family separation and detention was one of the lowest points of the first Trump Administration and Americans resoundingly rejected it. This is another proof point of Trump’s harmful obsession with immigration and the targeting of our families no matter the cost.”
Family detention is just one part of their cruel scheme. This weekend, the Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem (we should say “Acting” Secretary cause it’s an act. She has no real authority, that’s all Stephen Miller. Her job is to do media and stunts), was once again trumpeting “child separation” on “Face the Nation”:
“Remember, everybody has an option,” Noem said on Face the Nation. “They have an option to be here legally or illegally, and they can self-deport as well.”
“The kids don’t really have a choice in this,” Brennan interjected before she was cut off.
“Well, the kids do have a choice,” Noem said. “If they have parents, they make a choice to keep their families together, if they want to or not.”
The first Trump administration’s vile child separation shocked the nation. And, it’s clear the new version will be even worse. “The kids have a choice” are the words of a monster.
