{"id":220,"date":"2026-06-15T09:41:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T09:41:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/frontierhousingreport.com\/?p=220"},"modified":"2026-06-15T09:41:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T09:41:13","slug":"trumps-deportation-machine-taking-aim-at-vulnerable-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/frontierhousingreport.com\/?p=220","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s Deportation Machine Taking Aim at Vulnerable Children"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Trump administration is targeting immigrant children who have been victims of abuse, neglect, or abandonment for rapid deportation, using new raids on schools and legal clinics alongside bureaucratic moves to strip the protection once offered by Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS).<\/p>\n

Read more Ultimate Fighting Beyond the South Lawn<\/a><\/p>\n

As they speedrun cases through immigration court with new \u201cmega master\u201d hearings, this attack on SIJS is sending children to detention when they would not have previously, and in some cases deporting them to countries they\u2019ve never visited, immigration attorneys and advocates said.<\/p>\n

More from Whitney Curry Wimbish<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cEverything they\u2019re doing is harming children,\u201d said Beth Baltimore, deputy director of the legal services center at The Door, a New York City nonprofit that offers free legal services to immigrants ages 12 to 24. In one recent instance, an immigrant from Guinea in his early twenties whom The Door had been working with was deported to Ghana, even though he had SIJS and had never been there.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe had this protection and it didn\u2019t matter,\u201d Baltimore told the Prospect<\/em>. \u201cHe doesn\u2019t know anybody in Ghana.\u201d<\/p>\n

Special Immigrant Juvenile Status is a humanitarian form of relief for immigrant children who have been abused, neglected, or abandoned by at least one parent, and where a state\u2019s juvenile court determined that it is not in their best interest to be returned to their country of origin. Congress established the status in 1990 as a way for vulnerable people younger than 21 to stay in the U.S. without the threat of deportation while they waited for a green card.<\/p>\n

But a Board of Immigration Appeals ruling last year and four more in 2026 reversed instances where judges allowed someone with SIJS to follow past practice and simply wait in line for their green card to arrive, saying that it\u2019s no guarantee that it will. One ruling terminated deferred action. Another, issued earlier this month, established that even if an unaccompanied child has SIJS, they are still subject to mandatory detention.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were really looking for cases to target kids,\u201d Baltimore said. \u201cAll of these cases are allowing judges to say, \u2018No, we can\u2019t terminate [the case], we can\u2019t do anything.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

In the Matter of Julian Santiago Pinzon Rozo, for example, Chief Appellate Immigration Judge Garry D. Malphrus found that an immigration judge wrongly delayed the deportation case against a young man from Colombia last year while he waited for a visa to become available. Pinzon Rozo had just turned 20 when he applied for SIJS last May.<\/p>\n

Several months later, DHS brought removal proceedings against him because he had overstayed the visa he\u2019d been on seven years earlier. But then in November, the federal government approved his SIJS petition, so Pinzon Rozo asked an immigration judge to drop the deportation case against him pending the availability of an SIJS visa. The judge did not drop the case, but instead agreed to delay the proceedings until February 12, 2027, buying more time while Pinzon Rozo waited.<\/p>\n

That was a mistake, said Malphrus, a former White House Domestic Policy Council staff member who participated in the \u201cBrooks Brothers riot\u201d in 2000. In this preview of January 6th, Malphrus and other besuited GOP staffers, including three current Supreme Court justices, stormed the Miami polling headquarters in 2000, chanting, \u201cStop the fraud,\u201d to shut down a vote recount and steal the election for George W. Bush.<\/p>\n

One reason it was a mistake, wrote Malphrus, is because visas for immigrants with SIJS are only available for people who had filed their visa petitions before July 15, 2021. \u201cThe amount of time the respondent would have had to wait for a visa number is highly uncertain and potentially lengthy,\u201d he wrote, so Pinzon Rozo should have been forced to leave or made to apply for asylum.<\/p>\n

Read more Trump\u2019s Bait and Switch on the Top Intelligence Job<\/a><\/p>\n

Now, judges are ordering children to apply for asylum\u2014still a lengthy process but much more difficult\u2014or agree to a removal order. The federal government issues fewer than 10,000 SIJS visas annually, according to Volunteer Lawyers for Justice. Attorneys said the new tactic was fundamentally unfair and harms children.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not their fault there\u2019s a backlog, it\u2019s not their fault that the process is slow,\u201d said Ram\u00f3n M. Guerra, an immigration attorney and professor of immigration and history at City College of New York. \u201cThey\u2019re not giving these kids enough time to wait for their priority date to come up, and they\u2019re basically putting a gun to their head and saying, \u2018OK, look you\u2019re either gonna take a deportation order or you\u2019re gonna file for asylum.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

According to documents NBC News obtained, \u201cICE detained 265 and deported 132 young people\u201d with SIJS last year.<\/p>\n

The attack on protection for vulnerable children comes as the Trump administration is turning the immigration legal system into a Kafkaesque nightmare and using that dysfunction to justify deporting one million people a year. His administration has fired dozens of immigration judges while drastically increasing the number of cases those who remain must hear in a day. As the Prospect<\/em> reported earlier this month, immigration judges throughout the U.S. are seeing as many as 121 cases in a single day, including in Boston, Chicago, Dallas, and New York.<\/p>\n

Requiring young immigrants eligible for SIJS visas to apply for asylum means more strain on that system as well as on pro bono immigration services across the United States, which immigration attorneys said were already at capacity as the Trump administration pursues its deportation goal. Immigrants may take an attorney with them to immigration court, but the government will not pay for legal representation, as it does in criminal court. Legal aid groups fill in to represent unaccompanied immigrant children for free; the government deports about 90 percent of children who show up without a lawyer, according to Probono.net\/ny.<\/p>\n

Trump officials are attacking those legal aid groups, too. Federal law enforcement officers are showing up at legal services providers for immigrants, demanding specific information on clients, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) said last Thursday. He condemned what he said were \u201cwidespread raids\u201d that broke the law.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is unacceptable for federal agents to show up unannounced at organizations that provide legal services to immigrants, including children in federal custody, and demand individualized information without cause,\u201d Wyden said in a statement. \u201cEvery action taken by the Trump administration has been a pretext for gathering information to use to satisfy Stephen Miller\u2019s white nationalist demand for higher deportation numbers\u2014including treating children as disposable and disregarding anti-trafficking laws.\u201d<\/p>\n

Immigration attorneys said they have had to get creative to find ways to protect their clients. They\u2019re worried about whether there are enough attorneys and services for vulnerable kids to make it through the Trump administration, and they\u2019re worried how already traumatized children will cope with the additional anxiety and stress of the regime. There are already so many frightening aspects of immigration under Trump, especially for children, like witnessing raids and arrests, attending court, and all the chronic anxiety of not knowing what the future holds.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are so scared, and I think there are so many things that are scary,\u201d Baltimore said. She used to be able to reassure young clients. \u201cAnd now there\u2019s so much uncertainty, so we can\u2019t make people feel less scared, because we can\u2019t honestly say it\u2019s going to be fine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Video: Is Greenland the Most Socialist Country in the World?<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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