A top Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official has confirmed the agency is arresting undocumented immigrants, including family members, who have stepped forward to sponsor migrant children under U.S. custody, CNN reports, a unprecedented baiting tactic that immigrant right advocates are calling “a new outrageous low, even by the standards of a Trump administration.”
Matthew Albence—the ICE official who notoriously compared migrant family jails to “summer camp”—said during a Senate hearing this week that ICE had arrested 41 people who wanted to sponsor children, the vast majority of them, 70 percent, solely for being in the country without authorization. “The news,” CNN continued, “will serve as confirmation of the worst fears of immigrants and their advocates.”
The Trump administration has increased vetting standards for possible sponsors, a move they claimed was for the safety of the child. But advocates insisted these procedures were sinister, following Health and Human Services (HHS) partnering with ICE “to more heavily scrutinize adults who come forward, including fingerprinting,” leading to fears that sponsoring a child could mean deportation.
For some, this new practice may now lead to that, as advocates had warned. This will also come at added expense of children, because without a sponsor, migrant kids will remain in custody. Additionally, news that the administration is newly sweeping up potential sponsors—“the Obama administration did not make a practice of arresting people who came forward as sponsors,” CNN notes—could scare away others who are also willing to take these children in.
To date, the Trump administration has a record 13,000 migrant children in custody, the vast majority of them unaccompanied minors, or children who came to the U.S. on their own. These kids are already escaping violent situations in their home countries, and deserve safety here, not detention and added trauma. Instead, officials are callously dragging them out as bait. Then, having caught their prey, the children get thrown back into custody to continue to wait for their freedom.
“Using detained kids as bait to arrest other immigrants is a new outrageous low,” Pili Tobar of America’s Voice said, “even by the standards of a Trump administration that has made indiscriminate cruelty towards immigrants its centerpiece.”
