By Ted Hesson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. agency responsible for unaccompanied migrant minors will be allowed to share sponsors’ immigration status with law enforcement agencies under a regulatory change, a move critics say could discourage families from claiming their children.
The U.S. Office for Refugee Resettlement (ORR), which cares for the children until they can be released, also will scrap regulatory language that had prohibited it from denying release solely based on a sponsor’s immigration status, according to a Federal Register notice due to be published on Tuesday.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration kicked off a wide-ranging immigration crackdown after taking office in January. It included an effort to track down hundreds of thousands of unaccompanied migrant children present in the United States.
Earlier this month, the top Trump official at ORR was abruptly removed amid pressure to intensify the initiative.
Unaccompanied children began arriving in large numbers a decade ago due to violence and economic instability in Central America. They were also drawn by U.S. immigration policies that enabled them to enter and often remain.
From ORR custody, children are released to sponsors – usually parents or relatives – as immigration authorities weigh their cases.
ORR argued that existing regulations put in place under former President Joe Biden conflicted with federal law, which it said prohibited government agencies from withholding any individual’s citizenship or immigration status.
Critics, however, say that sharing sponsors’ information with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement could make parents and other relatives reluctant to come forward to claim their children due to fear they could be detained or deported.
An ICE official in 2018 estimated that 80% of sponsors and family members lacked legal immigration status.
Migrant advocacy groups said the Trump administration last week largely shuttered a federal program that provided legal representation to unaccompanied children in court. They urged the administration to restore it.
“Ending this long-standing program is a direct attack on due process,” Shayna Kessler, a director at Vera Institute of Justice, one of the groups providing legal services to unaccompanied children, said in a statement on Friday.
The Administration for Children and Families, ORR’s parent agency, did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding the suspension of the program.
(Reporting by Ted Hesson; Editing by Joe Bavier)
Comments