It started with a call. A man who identifies himself as a Federal Immigration Agent has contacted Venezuela’s father in San Antonio, questioning his teenage son. The agent said the officials planned to visit the family’s apartment to appreciate the boy’s living conditions.
Later, on this day, the federal agents descended on their complex and covered the door with a black ribbon, my father remembered. The agents repeatedly shouted the names of the father and son, demanded to open the door and waited a few hours before leaving, the family reports. In horror, his father, 37, sent a message about an immigration lawyer who warned that the visit could be a reason for deportation. The agents returned the next two days, causing his father to be anxious that he missed work in the mechanics store. His son stayed home from school.
In recent months, the Department of Internal Security has carried out dozens of such visits across the country as part of the systematic search for children who came to the US-Mexico border on their own and sponsors who care about them while they conduct their immigration cases. The refugee relocation management, which is responsible for the help of children and for checking their sponsors, assisted in checks.
The agency’s welfare mission appears to be experiencing a great transformation when President Donald Trump seeks to increase deportation numbers in the second term, a dozen current and former Popublica and Texas Tribune reported. They say that one of the most striking signs of this shift is the scale of checks that immigration agents conduct using information provided by the relocation agency for the purpose of sponsors and children for deportation.
Trump’s representatives claim that the administration guarantees that children are not severely treated or counterfeit. But the current and former agency staff, immigration lawyers and supporters of children say that relocation agency drifts from their humanitarian mandate. Last week, Trump’s administration fired an Ambudsman Agency, hired by the Presidential Democratic Language Administration Joe Biden to act as the first watchman.
“Congress has created a system for the protection of children -migrants, partly giving them away agency, which is not part of forced execution,” said Scott Schuchart, a former internal security and immigration official and customs execution during Trump’s first term and later under Biden. Trump administration, Schuchart said, “trying to use this protective agreement as a force to harm children and adults who are ready to take advantage of them.”
In the past, Republicans called for orr, pointing to the cases of children operate in Dangerous jobs As examples of the agency Forest supervision. Lawyers, supporters and officials of the agency say that abuse cases are rare and should be rooted. They claim that the recent changes to the administration are tools for the protection of immigration that can make children and their sponsors more sensitive to the harmful living conditions and work as they are afraid of deportation.
Project 2025A human rights activist for the restructuring of the federal government, designed to move the relocation agency in the Department of Internal Security, which includes ICE, claiming that the preservation of agencies separately led to more juvenile minors. Despite the fact that Trump publicly deprived of his general plan during his re -elected campaign, many of his actions were agreed with her proposals.
During Trump’s first term, he demanded that orr share information about children and their sponsors, which are usually relatives. That led to arrests At least 170 sponsors in the country illegally and pushed the retreat of legislators and supporters who said the agency should not be used for deportation. Immediately after the start of his second term in January Trump issued Executive order Call for more information between the Department of Health and Human Services, which controls the relocation and security agency. Now the current and former employees of the relocation agency say that some immigration employees have been provided unimpeded access to its databases that contain sensitive and detailed information about affairs.
Exchange of data for “the only purpose for law enforcement agencies who are engaged in privacy and safety” children and their sponsors, Senator Ron Wider, Democrat Oregon The fierce letter to the Trump administration. In A March response In the video, Andrew Greedison, acting secretary HHS, said the relocation agency corresponds to the president Executive order and exchange of information with other federal agencies to ensure the security of children -immigrants. Widen told information organizations that he plans to continue pressing the answers. On Tuesday he sent another letter The administration, saying that he is “increasingly concerned” that orr shares private information “on the border” of what is allowed and “exposing already vulnerable children for further risks.”
Two propaganda groups fell A federal lawsuit Last week in Washington, claiming the Trump administration illegally abolished the key provisions of Biden’s 2024 rules. These provisions have banned Orri use immigration status to refuse sponsors the ability to take care of children. Previously, they also banned the agency exchange of sponsor information for the purpose of implementing immigration. The abolition of the provisions has led to a long detention of children, as sponsors are afraid or cannot claim them because they cannot meet the requirements, according to the lawsuit. The government did not respond to the lawsuit in court.
Combined with these changes to Trump Passed an ice official lead orr for the first time. This official was fired for two months in her work because she was unable to implement the changes of the administration “soon”, her successor to the post of Andja Salazar, the ICE veteran, said on March 6, received by Propublica and The Tribune.
“Some of these changes in politics have taken too long. Three weeks are too long,” Salazar told the staff, not providing specifics. Salazar said she would increase his efforts to test children -immigrants and strengthen his sponsors’ checks.
She told employees that in almost two weeks ICE investigators visited the juvenile residences unaccompanied. Agents have found several cases that, according to her, there were cases of sex and trading work. Salazar did not submit details, but said that detection of even one case of abuse is significant.
“These are my orders,” Salazar said. “Although I will never do anything by law for anyone or anything, and as long as we work within the law, we will wait that all you will do it and will support it.”
Salazar said she expected an increase in the number of children taken from her sponsors and returned to the federal care that was rare in the past.
Credit:
Chris Lee for PROPUBLICA and Texas Tribune
Ever since the Salazar has claimed responsibility, orr has created a raft of strict checks for the sponsors of children -immigrants who, according to the agency, are necessary to ensure the correct survey of sponsors. Here are included no longer Adoption of foreign passports or IDs as form of identification if people do not have legal permits to be in the US, relocation agency expanded DNA -checking relatives and increase Revenue Requirements, including compulsion for sponsors to submit recent wages or tax returns. (IRS recently announced that it will share tax information with ice to facilitate deportations.)
In a statement, Orr said he could not answer the current lawsuits and did not answer detailed questions about Salazar’s comments or reasoning for some new requirements. His policy is designed to ensure the safe placement of minors unaccompanied, and the agency “is not a law enforcement authority or an organization on immigration,” the statement reads.
Andrew Nixon, the HHS press, also refused to comment on the trial. But he criticized how the agency in his department was governed by Biden, saying that she could not protect the children unaccounted after they were released by sponsors, turning “blind eye to serious risks”. Jen Smirs, a former Deputy Director of the Orr, challenged these claims, saying that the Biden administration succeeded in solving many years of problems that included the creation of a unit to combat sponsor fraud and improving data systems for better children’s tracking.
Rable McLaflin, Assistant Secretary DHS, did not answer detailed questions, but stated that in a statement that her agency was sharing the goal of securing juvenile safety. She did not answer questions about Venezuelan in San -Anthony. She also refused to provide the number of houses that the agents visited all over the country or said whether they found cases of abuse or detained anyone for deportation.
In April’s e -mail received by Propublica and The Tribune, for the first time, the scale of the operation in the Houston region, which has moved the largest number of immigrants in the country in the last decade. In an e -mail, an ICE official said in the office of Harris Sheriff that the agency planned to visit more than 3,600 addresses related to such minors. Sheriff’s service did not help with checks, said the press secretary.
As also An internal Ice memo Last month, through a request for a law on freedom of information, a national immigration draft, based in Washington, instructed agents to find children unaccompanied and their sponsors. The document outlines a number of factors that federal agents should prefer when looking for children, including those who have not attended court hearings, may have gang ties or have deportation orders. In a note of detailed crimes, such as smuggling for which you can recover the sponsors.
In the case of the San -Anthonio family, the father has a temporary protected status, the US permission to certain people who face the danger of a home that allows him to live and work here legally. The news organizations failed to find a criminal record for him, his son is still waiting for hearings on the Immigration Court after crossing the US border and Mexico a year ago. The father said in a statement to the US asylum that he left Venezuela after receiving death for protest against President Nicolas Maduro’s government. The father, who refused to identify because he was afraid of the ice execution, said in an interview that his son later fled for the same reason.
Meanwhile, the avenues for families, like the Venezuelan man and his son, are caused by ORA behavior, and decreasing. The Trump administration has reduced the staff at the Ambudsman’s office. Mary Giovanyal, who headed the post, was stopped last week. The HHS spokesman said the agency did not comment on personnel issues, but in a letter to Giovanyol the agency stated that her employment “does not promote public interests”. Giovanyoli said the reductions had reduced the ability of the office to act as guard bodies to ensure that the relocation agency fulfilled its mission.
“There’s no effective supervision,” she said. “There is an attempt on Orro independence, and I think this close connection with the ICE makes everyone fear that at a time when you do not know where one agency stops, and the next one begins.”
Doris Burke have made research.
