United States President Donald Trump's administration has ordered the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to target and deport thousands of unaccompanied migrant children who are in the country without their parents.
The development comes after a memo titled "Unaccompanied Alien Children Joint Initiative Field Implementation" was released. It states that children will be deported if they are found to have existing deportation orders or are served with a notice to appear in immigration court.
ICE Ordered to Target Unaccompanied Migrant Children
The memo also orders agents to prioritize children labeled as "flight risks," including immigrants who failed to appear at a hearing. The remaining youths are prioritized as "public safety" or "border security." This order is a significant shift in ICE's usual deportation prioritization, which targets adults with criminal records.
Currently, children who come to the U.S. without a parent or legal guardian are placed in the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) until officials can put them in a home with a sponsor, who is usually a parent or other relative. At the same time, they wait for legal proceedings, according to Rolling Stone.
Read more: 11-Year-Old Texas Schoolgirl Commits Suicide After Bullies Threaten To Call ICE To Deport Her
The ORR said on its website that these children may have histories of abuse or may be seeking safety from threats of violence. The agency also showed data that revealed it has already released 27,840 children to the care of a sponsor.
Some of the kids in question are known to have been exploited as child laborers in the United States after they were released. The latest memo notes that the new initiative seeks to ensure that children are not trafficked or exploited in other ways, on top of giving orders to carry out deportations and legal action.
Plans for Mass Deportation
The memo also laid out four phases of implementation for the mass deportation efforts, beginning with a planning phase on Jan. 27, 2025. However, Reuters reported that it did not provide a start date for enforcing the operations themselves.
Government data showed that since 2019, there have been more than 600,000 immigrant children who arrived in the U.S. through the U.S.-Mexico border without a parent or legal guardian. This comes as the number of migrants who are caught illegally crossing the border has reached record levels.
The Trump Administration's latest memo comes as ICE Acting Director Caleb Vitello was recently removed from his post, but no replacement has been announced yet. He has been reassigned as Trump officials are growing more frustrated with the pace of the agency's arrests and deportations, as per Forbes.
