Trump administration plans to deport more than 500 migrant children within days, senator warns

The Trump administration is planning to bypass legal protections and hastily deport more than 500 unaccompanied migrant children, a top Democratic senator warned Thursday.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) told Health and Human Services Secretary (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy Jr in a letter that he “obtained credible information” that the Trump administration had a list of more than 500 migrant children currently in the care and custody of the agency’s Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) that were being targeted for fast-track removal in a matter of days.

The children have been in ORR custody, primarily in long-term foster care, for at least six months and do not have any relative or guardian in the U.S. to act as a sponsor.

ORR is responsible for sheltering migrant children who arrive at the southern border without any parent or guardian. Those children are often trying to reunite or be placed with a parent, relative or guardian who is already in the United States.

“This is a severe institutional failure that places hundreds of vulnerable children in immediate jeopardy, effectively erasing them from the protection of U.S. oversight and thrusting them back into danger,” Wyden wrote.

“To weaponize the very agency charged with their protection is an unacceptable escalation of executive overreach that undermines our nation’s commitment to due process.”

Wyden noted that “the vast majority” of the children have legal counsel in their immigration proceedings, and he warned HHS that any attempt to remove them “without the active involvement of these attorneys would constitute a severe breach of due process.”

Wyden is ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, which has oversight over ORR. In the letter, demanded the immediate suspension of “any screening initiative and planned removal action,” as well as additional information on the effort by the end of the day Friday.

Wyden issued a similar warning last year, just before the administration tried to remove a similar group of Guatemalan children in government custody.

On Labor Day weekend, immigration officials removed the children from foster homes or government-supervised shelters in the middle of the night and bused them to airfields in Texas with the intent of sending them back to Guatemala. The effort was halted at the last minute by a federal judge.

“The new information I obtained leads me to believe that the Department is laying the groundwork for another lawless deportation effort, this time on a greater scale, across more countries of origin,” Wyden wrote.

HHS denied the agency has any plans to round up and deport unaccompanied children.

“Despite this irresponsible fearmongering, there are no plans to target these children,” agency spokeswoman Emily Hilliard said in a statement, and blamed the Biden administration for rushing the release of children without adequate vetting of sponsors.

“The Trump Administration is working to identify the parents or legal guardians of unaccompanied alien children in our care because ensuring every child is placed with a properly vetted sponsor is our top priority,” Hilliard said.

As of May, the most recent government figures publicly available, there was an average of 1,816 unaccompanied children in ORR custody.

“This administration has a disturbing track record of treating unaccompanied children as a deportation target rather than as kids who are owed legal process and basic protection. We don’t know how or when this will occur, but we do know that this administration has repeatedly shown it will obliterate these children’s legal safeguards,” Melissa Adamson, senior attorney at National Center for Youth Law, said in a statement.

The key pieces of legislation designed to protect migrant children — the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 and the Flores Settlement Agreement— “do not contemplate the removal of children from ORR custody simply because a sponsor has not been identified,” Wyden wrote.