The Trump Administration’s Depraved Exploitation of Immigrant Children

On June 11, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin seemed close to tears as he described what the Trump administration has deemed the mass trafficking and abuse of children. Under the Biden administration, Mullin asserted that “absolute horrific things” occurred. “Some of these kids claim that they were raped six to seven hundred times,” he said. “We’re going to rescue as many kids as we can possibly find.... As a father of six with three young girls, I will do whatever I have to do.”Mullin was not referring to the victims of Jeffrey Epstein, but rather to a widespread conspiracy-driven theory about hundreds of thousands of “unaccompanied alien children,” or UACs, who entered the United States during the Biden administration and are falsely described by the Trump administration as missing and potentially trafficked.Now under intensified pressure to increase deportations and with a seemingly unlimited budget, DHS is using its $150 billion windfall to incentivize local law enforcement to assist in confirming the locations of UACs across the country via the 287(g) program, which deputizes police, sheriffs, and some constables to act as immigration agents. According to documents from DHS, these financial incentives can add up to tens of thousands of dollars for each UAC found and verified.Immigrant children are facing multiple attacks by the Trump administration, including decimation of legal services and ramped-up detention. Added to that mix, local police are getting in on the action under the guise of protecting children and fighting human trafficking. As part of the overall web of silent mass deportations, the supposed search for UACs blends QAnon-style conspiracy theories with an overfunded and supercharged deportation machine that has been targeting immigrant children and families without regard to the human rights consequences.“Sending armed agents to the homes of immigrant children is not a safety check. It is a serious threat of enforcement,” Mary Miller Flowers, the director of legislative affairs at the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights, explained. The results are likely to be nothing short of disastrous for everyone involved.When young people enter the country seeking asylum without their parents, they are generally released to a sponsor, often a family member already living in America. Unlike adults, children are processed by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, or ORR, which is under the auspices of Department of Health and Human Services, not DHS. According to a 1997 consent decree and the 2008 Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, child immigrants are entitled to certain rights and protections, including safe and sanitary conditions as well as prompt release from detention. Unlike DHS, a law enforcement agency, ORR was intentionally kept separate. Jen Smyers, the deputy director of ORR during the Biden administration, explained that ORR was intended to be about child welfare—not immigration enforcement.After ORR places immigrant children with their sponsors, most UACs receive a court date for their pending immigration case. These youth are supposed to keep their addresses current in order to follow up on their applications for asylum and immigration court dates, but not all of them do. Under the Biden administration, large numbers of UACs entered the country, largely as a result of changes to draconian immigration policies imposed by the first Trump administration. Detention facilities for these children filled to capacity, presenting dangers to young people’s health and safety. As required, the Biden administration released children to sponsors living in the United States. Republicans have claimed, with little evidence, that UACs were being placed with unvetted or unfit sponsors, arguing that this amounted to “human trafficking.” These rumors gained popularity as anti-immigration groups used alleged “human trafficking” as a reason to limit migration. As soon as Trump came into office for the second time, his administration claimed that nearly 450,000 UACs were potential victims of trafficking and that some 300,000 were considered “missing.” Immigration experts agree that this number is an utter invention—most UACs live with their sponsors, and some are now adults.Nevertheless, Trump’s DHS has prioritized locating these young people alongside other policies that have ramped up mass deportations, including by requiring ORR to turn over all the information it has to DHS for law enforcement purposes. According to a memo Immigration and Customs Enforcement released just days after Trump’s inauguration, DHS would “commence an operational initiative” to locate UACs who entered the country during the Biden administration. This included ensuring “UAC’s immigration obligations are met” as well as “investigative activities to ensure UAC are not subjected to crimes of human trafficking or other exploitation.”The initial phases of the initiative, according to the memo, were focused on locating UACs who were threats to public safety or flight risks, including young people who had run away from shelters. Later stages of the program appear intended to locate UACs and charge their sponsors with potential crimes—such as trafficking, violations of the Mann Act, or making false statements. Other publications have reported that ICE has hired private companies to locate immigrants, including UACs. DHS agents have also been engaged in these “wellness checks,” including in at least two Los Angeles elementary schools. It is not clear exactly what is happening to the children the agencies do find, but in most cases, they are still in deportation proceedings.In November 2025, DHS announced that 287(g) agencies would also have the option to participate in locating UACs, beginning in Florida, an example of the mission creep for 287(g). The memo reads, “The primary focus of this initiative is to conduct welfare checks on these children to ensure that they are safe and not being exploited.” Information about these UACs was sent to law enforcement, and the 287(g) partners are expected to return “an electronic form” to an email address, UAC287g@ice.dhs.Mullin and DHS have made “locating” these children a priority, transferring reams of information about UACs and their sponsors from ORR to DHS, as Reuters just reported. Attorney General Todd Blanche has instructed prosecutors to prioritize charges against UAC sponsors as part of this program. In reality, this so-called “verification initiative” has led to more arrests, mostly of adult sponsors. “They are trying to lay the predicate to do more removals,” Scott Shuchart, an immigration attorney and a former DHS official, explained. ICE, he said, was “spending like a moron with lottery money.”Since Trump took office in January 2025, 287(g) agreements have exploded. Most of the agreements are “task force” agreements, a program that allows local law enforcement to act like roving immigration agents with the same powers to question, arrest, and detain. Thanks to DHS’s supersized budget, 287(g) task force agencies are eligible for compensation, including reimbursement for officer time and stipends for vehicles and other equipment.There is no real way to track which 287(g) partners are also locating UACs as part of DHS’s program, because DHS has largely forbidden them from disclosing specifics. (The Young Center filed a lawsuit this week for records on the UAC verification initiative.)The information we do have suggests that agencies are being paid (or at least seeking payment) for each UAC verified. A reporter from the Chattanooga Times Free Press found through public records that an elected constable in southeastern Tennessee was assisting with locating UACs in other states. He had already received $107,500 for a vehicle and equipment, and he billed DHS for additional time. A document from the constable explains a payment structure that resembles a bounty—agencies are paid up to $2,500 for confirming the address of UAC as well as up to $20,000 for “verify[ing] the child’s safety and living conditions,” as well as school enrollment status.The mission is presented in the documents thus: “The UAC Safety Verification Initiative builds a unified framework among law enforcement partners to ensure every unaccompanied child is safe, accounted for, and protected from harm. It’s about coordination, accountability, and shared duty—every officer, every agency, working together for every child.”Information about agencies participating in UAC verification has been difficult to find. The impact of this “safety verification initiative” has been done with little notification or alert.On the few occasions that members of the public obtain information, officials have reacted fairly quickly. In Ohio, for example, a police chief from the township of Gratis went to a Cincinnati public school in an attempt to verify the location of some children there, according to school officials. Not only did the school principal deny access, but the officer was placed on administrative leave.In Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, the local district attorney Heather Adams signed a 287(g) agreement with ICE in September 2025 and trained one detective through a 40-hour online course for the “task force” 287(g) program. Adams told the public, “No one in our office is conducting immigration ‘sweeps’ or stopping cars as a part of our 287(g) agreement to assist in immigration enforcement.”It was not until March of this year that community members learned that this 287(g) task force agreement included a provision that allowed the trained detective to assist with the Unaccompanied Alien Children Safety Verification Initiative. (Trex Profitt, a member of Indivisible Lancaster, said that he thought the disclosure was an inadvertent slipup by Adams.) Adams issued a press release claiming the detective’s involvement was “minimal.”With 287(g) programs reaching historic heights—according to one researcher, there are now over 2,000 agencies with at least one agreement around the country—more local law enforcement agencies may become involved in locating immigrant children, often without clear guidelines or public notification. Plus, since it is back-to-school season, advocates told me that many people are concerned about the safety of sending children to school. “Giving the task of ‘child wellness checks’ to local law enforcement only exacerbates the widespread fear and distrust that immigrant families and communities experience when they consistently see local law enforcement engaged in immigration arrests and enforcement,” Nithya Nathan-Pineau, policy attorney at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, said.The greatest risk, according to advocates, is the arrest of adult sponsors and other family members. Once a child’s sponsor is arrested, that child returns to the custody of ORR and is still placed in deportation proceedings, according to Smyers. Under Trump, the ORR has added additional hurdles before it places kids with a sponsor, including complete background checks, which has led to children spending more time in ORR custody and has further separated parents from their children.Combined with the ongoing crisis over the lack of lawyers for young immigrants and hurried mass deportation hearings, children face an unprecedented risk of deportation. The Trump administration recently gave a no-bid contract to OUR Rescue, an “anti-trafficking” nonprofit formerly known as “Operation Underground Railroad,” to represent immigrant children in court. The founder of OUR Rescue, Tim Ballard, was ousted over accusations of sexual assault and trafficking.It’s plain that DHS’s main concern is not human trafficking; instead, it appears to be using a manhunt for UACs, under the guise of protecting children, as yet another way to locate immigrants to deport. None of this keeps children safe, Flowers emphasizes: “We know what keeps kids safe: being with family who loves them, living in a home and not a detention facility, and having a lawyer who represents them.”