(Bloomberg) — The Trump administration is preparing to launch a program that would offer money to unaccompanied migrant teenagers in federal custody in exchange for voluntarily returning to their home countries, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.
The initiative will begin with 17-year-olds and provide $2,500 to minors who choose to depart the US after an immigration judge approves their request and they arrive in their country of origin, said a person familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
HHS, which oversees the Office of Refugee Resettlement, said in a statement that the program was designed to provide options for children who were brought into the US without their families.
Officials said it’s intended to give unaccompanied minors, many of whom were smuggled into the country without a choice, the ability to decide whether to return home. They described the initiative as voluntary and said it would allow children to make an informed decision about their future.
Advocates and immigration lawyers warned this week that the effort could extend beyond 17-year-olds, possibly reaching children as young as 14. They said they worry the program could pressure minors to withdraw applications for protection, such as asylum, and waive legal safeguards that generally shield children from deportation before they turn 18.
Wendy Young, president of the legal aid and advocacy group Kids in Need of Defense, described the offer as an “egregious abuse of power.”
“This operation undermines laws that guarantee that process for unaccompanied children, and it runs counter to our nation’s longstanding commitment to protect the most vulnerable among us – children – from violence, trafficking, abuse, persecution, and other grave dangers,” Young said. “We urge DHS to immediately halt its operation and ensure that every child in US custody has access to the rights and protections enshrined in US law.”
Immigrant children are generally granted higher levels of protection under US law, including a decades-old court settlement that limits the government’s ability to detain them. Like adults in immigration proceedings, children aren’t guaranteed a lawyer to help them navigate the system.
As of August, the government reported there was an average of about 2,000 immigrant children in the care of HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement.
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