A recent report indicates that President Donald Trump’s officials in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are starting an effort to find and deport hundreds of thousands of unaccompanied children who entered the United States illegally.
The ICE memo reportedly obtained by Reuters indicates that this effort will have four phases. The first phase began on January 27, although it was unclear when enforcement actions would begin.
The title of the document is purportedly “Unaccompanied Alien Children Joint Initiative Field Implementation,” and it apparently justifies the directive as a means of stopping human trafficking or other forms of child exploitation. Reuters noted that the memo indicated that children would be served a notice to appear in immigration court or deported if deportation orders were pending against them.
The document also reportedly explained that ICE sorted unaccompanied minors into three priority groups, “flight risk,” “public safety,” and “border security,” with flight risk being the highest priority for agents because this class of illegal aliens includes those who have been ordered deported for missing court dates and those who are being sponsored by non-relatives.
Human trafficking has long been a concern surrounding children who cross the border illegally. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) locked horns with then President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas during senate hearings in the spring of 2023.
The senator asked Mayorkas how many illegal alien children had been sold into sex slavery during Mayorkas’s time in office. When Mayorkas failed to provide a figure and dodged questions about border security, Cruz said, “You are willing to let children be raped to follow political orders. This is a crisis. This is a disgrace, and you won’t even admit it is at a crisis.”
The secretary then called Cruz’s comments “revolting.”
However, solutions for handling unaccompanied illegal alien children are frequently contested. During his first stint in the White House, Trump imposed a “zero tolerance” policy that led to the separation of migrant children from their parents at the border. The policy sparked international outrage, and the 45th President halted the policy in 2018.
The Dallas Express previously reported that Retired Brigadier General Mike Wallace of the Texas Army National Guard said the outrage over this matter was unfounded.
“[That] was bogus; they were separated by feet,” Wallace said, adding, “They were separated so that agents could ask the children, ‘What is your dog’s name?’ ‘What color is the roof of your house?’ ‘What town are you from?’”
Wallace then explained that agents would separate and ask the same questions to people claiming to be family units to determine whether the children were being trafficked. Wallace also recalled that occasionally immigration officials conducted DNA testing to make similar determinations.
The apparent leak of the ICE memo follows other developments in American immigration policy, including U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi relieving several administrative immigration judges of their duty and refugee resettlement programs suffering layoffs across Texas.