The Trump administration is offering migrant children $2,500 to voluntarily return to their home countries, dangling a new incentive in efforts to persuade people to self-deport.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement didn’t say how much migrants would get or when the offer would take effect, but the Associated Press obtained an email to migrant shelters saying children 14 years of age and older would get $2,500 each. Children were given 24 hours to respond.
The notice to shelters from Health and Human Services Department’s Administration for Families and Children did not indicate any consequences for children who decline the offer. It asked shelter directors to acknowledge the offer within four hours.
ICE said in a statement that the offer would initially be for 17-year-olds.
“Any payment to support a return home would be provided after an immigration judge grants the request and the individual arrives in their country of origin,” ICE said. “Access to financial support when returning home would assist should they choose that option.”
Advocates said the sizable sum may prevent children from making informed decisions and have urged Homeland Security to abandon the plans.
“For a child, $2,500 might be the most money they’ve ever seen in their life, and that may make it very, very difficult for them to accurately weigh the long-term risks of taking voluntary departure versus trying to stay in the United States and going through the immigration court process to get relief that they may be legally entitled to,” Melissa Adamson, senior attorney at the National Center for Youth Law, said in response to the plans Friday.
ICE dismissed widespread reports among immigration lawyers and advocates that it was launching a much broader crackdown Friday to deport migrant children who entered the country without their parents, called “Freaky Friday.”
But the offer follows legal battles over aborted efforts to remove dozens of Honduran and Guatemalan children from the United States, as lawyers and shelter workers across the country scramble to prevent what they have feared are imminent attempts to deport them.
Legal aid groups believe federal immigration authorities, with the Honduran government’s support, are preparing to remove children from Honduras who arrived in the United States without a parent or guardian and are now in the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement.
Homeland Security investigators and representatives from the Honduran consulate met with several Honduran children at an Arizona shelter in recent weeks, and immigration court cases for Honduran children suddenly disappeared, according to aid groups.
The moves follow a “similar pattern” involving cases of Guatemalan children in August before the government tried to abruptly remove them without a court hearing — sparking a dramatic, fast-paced legal battle detailed in dozens of harrowing court statements from the children themselves.
Wendy Young, president of Kids in Need of Defense, which represents children who arrived in the United States without a parent or guardian, called the Trump administration’s latest maneuver an “egregious abuse of power and a cruel tactic that uses children as pawns.”
“Unaccompanied children seeking safety in the United States deserve our protection rather than being coerced into agreeing to return back to the very conditions that placed their lives and safety at risk,” she said.
“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 added.
New York Immigration Coalition has advised any child or person who receives an offer notice from ICE to immediately contact an immigration attorney.
“Children fleeing violence and seeking safety deserve compassion, stability, and fairness — not cruelty,” coalition president Murad Awawdeh said Friday.
“This policy pressures children to abandon their legal claims and return to a life of fear and danger without ever receiving a fair hearing,” Awawdeh said. “The chaos built into this policy will devastate families and communities — and it is targeted to hurt children.”
