DEPORTATIONSICE Is Arresting Relatives Who Come Forward to Take Custody of Migrant Children in Federal Shelters
Attorneys say the federal agencies are using children as “bait” to detain sponsors, leaving kids waiting in shelters for months.
On an early April morning, two U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents approached Y.R. in the parking lot of her Dallas-Fort Worth area apartment as she was about to head to her construction job.
Y.R., a 37-year-old undocumented Honduran immigrant who came to the U.S. in early 2022, had spent nearly a year filling out government forms and submitting to a background check and DNA test to get custody of her niece and nephew, who had been stuck in a federal shelter after they crossed the Texas-Mexico border in the spring of 2025.
After two weeks in a detention center in North Texas, Y.R., was released on bond by an immigration judge and reunited with her now 11-year-old niece and 14-year-old nephew in May — over a year after they entered the shelter. Even though they have reunited, Y.R. is in deportation proceedings.
“I never thought about giving up on trying to get them. Even when I got arrested, I immediately thought about my niece and nephew,” said Y.R., who asked to be identified by her initials out of fear that the Trump administration may retaliate against her. “I told my lawyer, ‘I’m not leaving the U.S without the children.’”
Since President Donald Trump returned to office, his administration has implemented a slew of changes to the vetting process for close relatives and other guardians who volunteer to take in undocumented children, from narrowing the list of acceptable identity documents to mandating DNA tests. Crucially, it also dropped a rule that prohibited the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which cares for unaccompanied migrant kids, from sharing information about potential sponsors with ICE.
According to ICE documents, agents said they found and arrested Y.R. with help from the Office of Refugee Resettlement.
Those changes have led to prolonged stays in shelters for unaccompanied children. Some advocates say the changes allow ICE to use kids as “bait” to arrest their potential caregivers.
Under the first Trump administration, immigration officials created a public firestorm by separating children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border — parents went to detention centers while children went to shelters. In some cases, the parents were deported while their children remained in shelters for months.
