By Amanda Seitz and Alanna Durkin Richer
Washington (AP)-The Administration of President Donald Trump performs a national multi-agencies of 450,000 migrant children who crossed the American-Mexican border without their parents during the mandate of President Joe Biden.
Trump officials say they want to find these children and ensure their safety. Many children have come to the United States during border overvoltages in recent years and were then placed in houses with adult sponsors, generally parents, parents or friends of the family.
Defenders of migrants are doubtful of the tactics of the republican administration, who include the distribution of internal security and the FBI to visit children. Trump’s zero tolerance approach to immigrants in the United States illegally – which led small children to leave the country – has deeply raised that his administration could use the exam to expel any sponsors or children who do not live legally in the country.
Trump officials say that adult sponsors who welcomed migrant children were not always correctly verified, leaving some at risk of operations. The Ministry of Justice charged a man on allegations that he prompted a 14-year-old girl to travel from Guatemala to the United States and then claimed that she was her sister to take custody as a sponsor.
Trump officials will make checks and interviews at home
Trump officials expect more problematic sponsors to surface while the administration is carrying out door strokes and interviews to check the cases in which complaints – around 65,000 of them since 2023 – have been filed. This year, around 450 cases of complaints have been returned to federal laws responsible for the application of laws, according to a senior health and social services who has not been authorized to publicly discuss the details of the exam and spoke under the cover of anonymity.
“We paint through each report, every detail – because the protection of children is not optional,” said HHS in an article on social networks on X. The Secretary of Health, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
For at least a decade, the federal government has enabled adults to apply for migrant children who crossed the unreventhed border or legal guardian. The program, however, was in the grip of problems during the democratic years of the Biden administration when officials had trouble treating an influx of thousands of children. Federal officials have not carried out history or address checks in some cases before placing children with sponsors. In other cases, the sponsors provided clearly false identification, a federal guard report concluded last year.
After the publication of this report, the Biden administration said it had already worked to improve problems by “training, monitoring, technology and evaluation”.
Thousands of children were placed with legitimate sponsors
But thousands of children have also been placed in legitimate families, some of whom are now afraid of being swept away in the Trump administration and targeted for deportation, said Mary Miller Flowers, political director of Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights.
The center is responsible for working with some of the most vulnerable children who cross the border. Flowers said that many children have been placed with their parents, grandparents, cousins, aunts or uncles.
In some cases, children can arrive at the border separately from their parents who already live in the United States and find them as part of the program.
“Now you have a situation where the government checks the well-being of children and meets their undocumented parents and expel their parents,” said Flowers. “I don’t know anything good for children.”
The government has taken custody of 100 children
Until now, around 100 children in the past two months have been withdrawn from their sponsors and warned to the federal government, generally in private shelters, according to the head of the Ministry of Health.
In Cleveland, the federal prosecutors alleged that a man, who lived illegally in the United States, arranged for the 14-year-old girl to obtain a copy of the birth certificate of her sister and then coordinated his trip from Guatemala to the United States, he claimed to be his brother, but no fingerprint or DNA tests were carried out for the main ministry who was authorized to speak public and to have spoken on the condition of the condition of the condition of the continuation of the conduct.
The man pleaded guilty to a sexual battery of the child at Ohio State Court in 2024 and was sentenced to eight years in prison, the official said. The man now faces federal accusations, in particular to induce an illegal entry for a financial gain and an aggravated identity theft. Man’s lawyers refused to comment.
As part of the journal, the Trump administration strives to identify the location of each child who has been placed with a sponsor, said the head of the Ministry of Justice. Investigators are subjected to suspicious sponsorship requests, such as the so-called “super sponsors”, who claimed to have family relationships with more than a dozen unaccompanied children, the official said.
Videos and reports of armed agents of the application of laws presenting to carry out well-being checks at the doors of unaccompanied minors and their sponsors have surfaced from across the country.
In a statement sent by email, the FBI said that it made well-being checks “nationally” because “children protection is a critical mission”, adding that it would continue to work with its “federal, state and local partners to ensure their safety and well-being”.
But the defenders have raised doubts that children will open up to abuses or other concerns concerning their sponsors to armed agents of the application of the laws of federal agencies which simultaneously perform mass expulsion campaigns.
H2LA research of children led to the expulsion of certain adults
In Hawaii, internal security agents have traveled Kona for unaccompanied minors and their sponsors, with two families expelled accordingly and another child giving in police custody, according to a report by the Honolulu civil report. Last month, a lawyer from Northern Virginia published a video of five federal agents visiting the home of his client, who awaits a green card, for a wellness check. And in Omaha, a 10-year-old child who came to the United States did not accompany about three years ago and was placed with his uncle was visited by armed agents in “Black, Tactical Gear” two weeks ago, according to his lawyer. He was asked a series of questions, including the status of his case and where his sponsor is, according to his lawyer Julia Cryne.
“They use it as a way to continue children,” said Cryne. Her client, she added, recently approved his request for a green card.
H2New rules make things more difficult for sponsors
The Trump administration has considerably changed the operation of the sponsorship program. It is reduced funding for lawyers who represented the most vulnerable migrant children, even leaving toddlers or preschool children without representation funded by the federal government.
The administration has also deployed a number of new rules for adults who wish to sponsor a migrant child, according to the directives obtained by the Associated Press. In recent weeks, the office has started to demand that sponsors submit fingerprints, DNA tests and income check to strengthen its screening procedures.
This could be an obstacle for many sponsors who may not have income or may be undocumented, Flowers said. Children cannot leave the federal guard as long as they are not given to a sponsor.
“They have put a trifecta of policies which essentially prevent them from leaving federal detention,” said Flowers.
Beatrice Dupuy in New York contributed.
Originally published:
California Daily Newspapers
