Trump is using a program for unaccompanied children to separate families

Immigration agents are routing children taken from their parents into a federal network built for minors who cross the border alone, according to Mother Jones reporting highlighted by MS NOW host Jacob Soboroff. Such cases now fill a large share of the Office of Refugee Resettlement's workload.

Consider Andrés, an 11-year-old from Venezuela who came with his father, Luis, in 2023 (both names are pseudonyms). Agents arrested them outside their home in April and held them in El Paso, Texas. Around midnight, officers removed the boy from the cell. Luis spent days not knowing where his son was; the boy had been classified as unaccompanied and placed with a Texas foster family. He is now pursuing a return to Venezuela, where his mother lives, through immigration court.

Mother Jones received a denial from a spokesperson, while DHS gave MS NOW no reply. Jen Smyers, deputy director of the refugee office under the Biden administration, contends the aim is to deter parents from sending children to the United States. Jonathan White, who ran the program in Trump's first term, has said Trump and Stephen Miller commandeered it for a purpose the law never authorized.

Summarized by PolitiKool from MS NOW’s reporting. Read the full story at MS NOW →