The Trump administration directed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to track down hundreds of thousands of migrant children who either entered the United States unaccompanied by parents or were separated from their parents after arriving.
The ICE memo, titled the “Unaccompanied Alien Children Joint Initiative Field Implementation,” outlines a plan that consists of four phases, with an initial planning phase on January 27. A start date for the actual enforcement of the plan was not provided.
As well as enforcing immigration laws, the memo… said the initiative aims to ensure that children are not victims of human trafficking or other forms of exploitation.
The memo said 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.
Reuters
The harsh treatment of migrant children by the Trump administration hardly comes as a surprise. In his first term, Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy caused the separation of children from their parents at the border.
Many of the separated children were placed under the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). They are typically released to sponsors, either parents or relatives of the minors. However, the ORR does not track the whereabouts of these children after their release. As such:
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.
Reuters
The head of the ORR, former ICE official Mellissa Harper, has emphasized the use of DNA to establish familial relationships of children and sponsors to better crack down on them. The Trump administration has tapped into ORR’s database of children and their sponsors.
