DHS Plans To Pay Unaccompanied Minors $2,500 to Self-Deport and People Are Seriously Alarmed
The Trump administration is extending financial incentives for migrant children to “self-deport”. Reports by multiple outlets allege that the federal government is going to offer unaccompanied minors $2,500 to leave the country. This is the latest effort by the federal government to encourage people to leave the United States. It is part of the broader and more aggressive mass deportation strategy.
The federal government is offering cash for unaccompanied minors to “self-deport”
The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) is preparing to offer unaccompanied minors stipends to leave the United States. In letters sent to migrant centers, the ORR is offering unaccompanied migrant teenagers 14 or older $2,500 to “self-deport.” Critics are calling the latest decision cruel towards minors that need U.S. protection. ORR is first offering the money to 17-year-olds.
“Unaccompanied children seeking safety in the United States deserve our protection rather than being coerced into agreeing to return back to the very conditions that placed their lives and safety at risk,” Wendy Young, president of Kids in Need of Defense, told Reuters.
Officials define unaccompanied minors as children who enter the U.S. without a parent or legal guardian. Authorities process the children and send them to federally run facilities. From there, they either reunite them with a family member in the U.S. or place them in the foster care system.
The latest numbers show that there are more than 8,000 children in the custody of ORR. The number is a major decrease from the peak of more than 22,000 unaccompanied minors in federal custody.
Attorneys for child migrants are concerned
Legal representatives for migrant children are raising the alarm about what this means for their clients. Advocates fear that officials will coerce the children into signing documents they do not fully understand.
“We’re worried that children are going to be put in a very difficult position, pressured to make a decision — a very momentous decision related to their case without having all the info,” Joel Frost-Tift, a senior supervising immigration attorney for the unaccompanied children’s team at Public Counsel, told Scripps News.
The self-deportation payment plan for migrant children was announced one day before a key federal court ruling.
The judge’s order focused on how ICE treats unaccompanied migrant children in custody. Federal Judge Rudolph Contreras, in an order, blocked ICE from changing how it treats those aging out. The order prevents ICE from immediately transferring the teenagers into federal immigration detention.
According to POLITICO, ICE has to seek the least restrictive and punitive arrangement to work with those who are aging out of the system. The concern raised in court filings is that ICE alerted field offices that all people aging out should immediately be sent to immigration detention facilities.
“It’s clear that they’re testing out several policies of dubious legality — or clearly illegal in the case of the policy referenced in our lawsuit — and seeing what sticks,” Michelle Lapointe, legal director at the American Immigration Council, told POLITICO.
