The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) plans to open a call center with a specialized unit to locate unaccompanied migrant children. The idea is for local and state authorities to cooperate by informing the immigration agency of the whereabouts of these undocumented minorities, thus facilitating their apprehension and subsequent deportation.
The measure is part of the Trump administration’s campaign against migrants, which has not spared children. In addition to targeting children under 18, it would also target people who entered the country illegally as minors but are now adults.
The center would provide information to federal authorities, according to the document, posted Tuesday on a government procurement website and reported by Reuters. ICE is looking to create a 24-hour operations center capable of handling 6,000 to 7,000 immigration-related calls daily.
The contract document indicates that the facility will be located in Nashville, Tennessee, although it does not explain why that city was chosen. CoreCivic, one of the two largest private prison companies operating ICE detention centers, is based in Nashville.
In fiscal year 2024, only about 98,000 children crossed the U.S. border, fleeing poverty, violence or abuse in their home countries. The GOP criticized the previous administration for losing track of thousands of minorities sent to live with sponsors in the United States, putting them at risk of falling into human trafficking rings. Children’s advocates are wary of the intentions behind the search for these children. “I don’t think ICE needs to know where these children are, because it’s clear that what ICE is doing across the country has nothing to do with helping people, much less unaccompanied children,” says Scott Bassett, an attorney for the Amica organization.
Unaccompanied minors have been the target of Trump’s anti-immigration crusade since the start of his second term. Several initiatives have been aimed at facilitating their deportation. Shortly after taking office, the president attempted to shut down federal legal services for unaccompanied minors, cutting funding to organizations that represent and assist them in the asylum process.
Although a federal court temporarily blocked this stay while the case was resolved, the attempt to undermine child protections is deeply troubling. “Legal representation can make the difference between safety and danger. Children who have legal representation obtain compensation in 73% of cases, compared to only 15% without lawyers,” according to the International Rescue Committee (IRC).
Trump is unhappy with the pace of deportations, which are not on track to reach the one million goal in his first year, so any strategy to increase the number is being explored. That now means searching for children, or those who came to the United States as children, even if that means bypassing necessary legal procedures.
$2,500 for self-service
Last month, it was revealed that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) would offer $2,500 to unaccompanied minors over the age of 14 in custody to self-deport. Critics, who dubbed the plan Operation Freaky Friday, decried the coercion minors would face. “If they really wanted to help, the best way to do it is to provide them with lawyers to protect their rights in court,” Bassett said. A few days ago I visited one of the reception centers where children are held in custody by the authorities to explain the proposal, which involves renouncing their right to seek asylum in the future.
The DHS has defended the initiative as an incentive for children to return to their families, but children’s advocacy organizations report that in many cases they are fleeing the very abuse they suffer in their homes.
DHS used the same justification in August to put 76 Guatemalan children, who had arrived alone in the United States, onto a plane in the middle of the night with the intention of returning them to the country they had fled. A judge blocked the transfer. The judge did not find this to be family reunification, as government lawyers claimed, because the families had not requested it and the children did not want to return to their countries. The administration planned to deport more than 300 children in total to Guatemala.
Changes in immigration policy for minors since Trump returned to the White House have completely transformed the treatment migrant children receive. “It’s a completely different world now,” Bassett says. His organization visits shelters almost every two weeks to explain all the changes. During his last visit, a little girl asked him, “Why are they still doing this to us? What did we do wrong?”
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