For decades, I’ve listened to children—in border shelters, red-light districts, refugee camps, and various quiet corners of the globe where safety is often a fragile hope. Their voices have taught me to observe not merely what laws state, but what they actually accomplish, especially when legal frameworks neglect the essence of childhood.
In the United States today, immigration policies are influencing more than just national borders; they are shaping childhood itself. Steadily and subtly, the structure of enforcement has encroached inward—into homes, educational settings, medical facilities, and safe havens. Children, once legally recognized as a distinct category requiring protection, are now being drawn into systems of observation and detainment. Some are isolated; others live with an increasing fear that by staying with their parents, they might lose them.
Since January, new executive orders and enforcement directives have transformed the U.S. immigration system. What has emerged is a framework where children are not only disregarded but also repurposed—serving as tools for enforcement.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) now has access to information collected by the Office of Refugee Resettlement from its network of shelters—data that includes the names and locations of adults who come forward to sponsor children. These adults, often parents, siblings, or grandparents, are subsequently fingerprinted, DNA tested, and sometimes detained. For numerous families, the act of claiming a child now carries the risk of deportation.
Consequently, sponsors are withdrawing their support. Children are enduring longer waits in shelters. Some children, without anyone willing to step forward to care for them, are left without direction. They are no longer viewed as children in need of care, but rather as connections to unauthorized adults.
An internal ICE memo, titled the , justified these actions as part of a strategy to prevent trafficking. However, having advised the United Nations on anti-trafficking frameworks, assisted in rescuing girls from brothels in India, and taught this specific subject at New York University, I can affirm this is not how we prevent trafficking. This is how we cultivate the conditions for it.
Children who have escaped danger, abuse, conflict, sex-trafficking, or forced labor often arrive in the U.S. clinging to the promise of safety. When they discover that coming forward could expose their parents or relatives, many retreat into obscurity.
They discontinue their schooling. They stop visiting parks, clinics, and libraries. They stop seeking assistance. Cut off from essential services and trustworthy adults, they disappear from notice, into low-wage jobs, exploitative housing, and survival economies.
Children who are isolated, denied legal support, and separated from family care are not shielded from trafficking; they are made vulnerable to it.
The circumstances we have created—months-long stays in shelters, the apprehension of identifying a sponsor, and the loss of schooling and security—do not deter predators. They attract them. In certain instances, deportation delivers children directly back into the custody of the traffickers they had fled.
More than unaccompanied children have entered the U.S. since 2019. Their individual stories vary. Some escaped gang violence or forced labor, while others came to reunite with a parent already residing here. However, they share a common experience with a legal system that increasingly regards them as a risk rather than as refugees.
In recent months, . Children now remain in federal custody for an average of seven months, while relatives deliberate the dangers of coming forward.
In February, legal aid funding for unaccompanied minors was temporarily . Tens of thousands of children were left without lawyers. Even after services were reinstated, the disruption’s effects persisted. A missed court date, previously a minor bureaucratic obstacle, is now sufficient to trigger a deportation order. Children, many of whom do not speak English or comprehend the process, are left without representation, unnoticed, and unprotected.
This system does not exclusively impact those who arrive unaccompanied. It casts a shadow over millions of children already residing here.
Today, 18 million American children, , live in households with at least one immigrant parent. Many of these parents may lack legal status, even if they have resided in the U.S. for decades. They are raising children who recite the Pledge of Allegiance, participate in Little League, and win high school spelling bees. Yet, these children now live with a dual apprehension: that the nation they call home may not safeguard them, and that their very presence might bring harm to the individuals they love most.
A recent executive order aimed to revoke for children of undocumented or temporarily present parents. Although blocked by the courts, the message conveyed was unmistakable: even those born here may no longer be secure.
This situation does not have to persist. U.S. law already incorporates the fundamental principles required to protect children: due process, family unity, and the best interest of the child. However, these principles are only meaningful when they are implemented in policy, within courtrooms, and in homes.
When we treat children as threats, we teach them to fear compassion. When we regard their families as liabilities, we undermine the very relationships that fortify children. What is lost in this system is not just safety. It is the feeling of being embraced by a community, by a country, by the notion that a child’s worth is not determined by their documentation, but by their existence.
Children are not instruments of enforcement. They are not risks to manage or data points to exploit. They are children. And in forgetting this truth, we risk losing something far more profound than a policy debate. We risk losing our collective identity.