The Trump administration wants to offer immigrant children $2,500 to self-deport, according to a memo obtained by the Guardian.
The memo, sent by the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to legal providers representing unaccompanied children and reviewed by the Guardian, says that immigration officials have identified unaccompanied immigrant children 14 years of age and older in government custody who have expressed interest in voluntarily departing the US.
The government “will provide a one-time resettlement support stipend of $2,500” to these children in exchange for their voluntary departure, the memo states. It notes that unaccompanied minors from Mexico will not be eligible.
DHS confirmed the details of the memo and its plans to offer children money in a statement to the Guardian on Friday.
The effort by the administration is a significant departure from longstanding immigration policy related to minors in US custody, according to experts. Although voluntary departure for unaccompanied immigrant children has always been an option, it typically requires consultation with attorneys and approval by a judge. The administration’s decision to incentivize children to engage in self-removal is new.
The administration’s “message is confusing and seems to fly in the face of established laws and protocols that Congress passed to protect children from cyclical trafficking risks”, said Shaina Aber, executive director of the Acacia Center for Justice, in a statement. “We are concerned by messaging from the Department of Homeland Security that suggests children who were trafficked against their will into the US by cartels will be part of an incentive program aimed at getting children to waive their legal rights under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act.”
Immigration lawyers and advocates have expressed alarm at the potential ramifications for children and their families. “We are mindful that this $2,500 incentive being offered to children in exchange for giving up their legal claims and accepting voluntary departure has the potential to exploit their unique vulnerabilities as unaccompanied minors in government custody,” said Marion “Mickey” Donovan-Kaloust at the Los Angeles-based legal aid group Immigrant Defenders Law Center, or ImmDef.
“This policy pressures children to abandon their legal claims and return to a life of fear and danger without ever receiving a fair hearing,” said Murad Awawdeh, president of the New York Immigration Coalition. “The chaos built into this policy will devastate families and communities – and it is targeted to hurt children.”
Children who arrive in the US or at a border without a parent or guardian are classified as unaccompanied minors, and are placed in the custody of the office of refugee resettlement (ORR), which is under HHS. Children are placed in federal government-run shelters until they can be reunited with family members vetted by the ORR, or with foster families, a process outlined in federal law.
Since the Trump administration came into office, it has engaged in efforts to remove immigrant children from the US. The administration has attempted to roll back legal representation for minors, cutting back a federally funded program that provided legal aid for unaccompanied children.
In late August, the administration prepared to hastily deport dozens of Guatemalan children. Many of the children had pending immigration cases and had not elected to leave the US, according to their lawyers.
Dozens of children were roused from their beds at shelters and taken to an airport in the early morning hours and ushered onto flights – and were only released after a judge temporarily blocked the deportations.
“We urge the public not to lose sight of the broader context in which this program is unfolding: a sustained assault on children’s access to legal counsel, dramatically prolonged detention periods, the expedited processing of deportation cases, and, most disturbingly, children being dragged from their beds in the middle of the night last month and threatened with deportation,” said Donovan-Kaloust.
Members of Congress also have expressed concern about the treatment of immigrant children in US government custody. This week, led by the representative Delia Ramirez, those members wrote a letter to DHS opposing efforts to return immigrant children to their countries of origin.
The letter, which has not previously been reported on, was submitted before the newest Trump administration memo incentivizing children to voluntarily return to their countries of origin. The members of Congress requested that DHS provide information on its push to return immigrant children to their home countries.
“Given that we know the Trump Administration has no concern for keeping families together, we expect that DHS’s new policy will deprive children of due process and place them in grave danger of trafficking and other harm,” the members wrote.
The newest directive was sent to ORR legal service providers on Friday morning, four days after the congressional letter.
Dina Francesca Haynes, executive director of the Orville H Schell Jr Center for International Human Rights at Yale, said she questioned how children who are not old enough to enter into contracts on their own could be expected to consent to a legally complicated immigration decision.
She said she is also concerned that the program will fuel family separations. Already, the Trump administration has issued stringent new restrictions on who can take custody of unaccompanied minors, requiring US identification, proof of income and in many cases a DNA test of family members seeking to reunite with children in ORR shelters or foster care. The new limits have made it especially difficult for immigrant families, and undocumented immigrants, to take custody of children.
Haynes said she worries that children would feel pressured to accept a voluntary departure in order to protect their family members from being targeted or deported.
“It’s just so astonishing that this is something that [the US] would be doing as a policy,” she said. “It’s coercing children who are already traumatized.”
Earlier on Friday, rumors began spreading regarding the administration’s efforts to target children and incentivize them with money to voluntarily depart.
According to a statement from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the “voluntary option gives UACs [unaccompanied children] a choice and allows them to make an informed decision about their future. Any payment to support a return home would be provided after an immigration judge grants the request and the individual arrives in their country of origin.”
The offer is being made to 17-year-old unaccompanied children first, DHS said, despite the memo outlining that the deal is being offered to children as young as 14.
The stipend program to urge children to depart the US echoes a similar scheme that the government devised to incentivize adults to self-deport. In May, the administration announced it would offer a $1,000 incentive to immigrants who “self-deport” using a government-designed app.
Following the launch of that self-deportation program, it was unclear how many people partook in the scheme and whether any of them actually received the promised $1,000, Haynes said. “So I don’t know that the funds would actually be an incentive,” she said.
Advocates have also raised alarm that children are increasingly being used as pawns in an effort to locate and deport their family members. Earlier this year, the Guardian reported that DHS was beginning to seek out unaccompanied immigrant children in operations nationwide in an attempt to deport them or pursue criminal cases against them or their adult sponsors.
A recent Guardian investigation found that immigrant families are being threatened with separation from their children in order to coerce immigrants and asylum seekers to leave the US. In several cases, officials have forcibly separated immigrant children from their parents, and misclassified the children as “unaccompanied minors”, in an apparent effort to retaliate against families who have challenged deportation orders or insisted on their right to seek asylum.
