Kids Forced to Appear Alone in Court as Trump Ramps Up Deportations

The Trump administration is moving to radically expedite the removal of immigrant children, impeding the work of immigration advocates, CNN reported Tuesday.

Immigration hearings for children are being moved up by weeks or even months, making it increasingly difficult for children to obtain legal resources or relief. These are children who are either unaccompanied minors or are taken into custody after their parents are detained for immigration charges.

Children as young as 4 years old are subjected to frequent hearings and forced to provide updates on their cases, in some instances without legal help, CNN reported. Emily Norman, the East Coast regional director at Kids in Need of Defense, told the outlet that immigrant children were facing “enormous pressure,” leading some of them to wet themselves in court.

It sounds like advocates are facing increasing pressure too. Norman told CNN that a hearing for one child, originally scheduled for 2027, had been moved up to a week away.

At the same time, the Trump administration has made it increasingly difficult for immigrant children to be allowed to stay in the United States. Sponsors in the U.S. now face stricter documentation requirements and even risk arrest themselves. Another method of securing the children’s release in the United States is to acquire special immigrant juvenile status, or SIJ, a legal process that can put them on the path to receiving a green card if they have experienced abuse or neglect.

Steven Wright, a clinical professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Immigrant Justice Center, told CNN that the process for that can take months. “In order to stop the government from removing the kids, I need to have that SIJ piece of paper. And they’ve given me a deadline that’s made it extremely difficult for me to get that SIJ piece of paper,” he said.

Immigrant children are often subjected to extended stays with the Office of Refugee Resettlement, or ORR, during which they can be subjected to all kinds of alleged mistreatment and abuse, either at government shelters or foster homes.

However, advocates are concerned that accelerated timelines wouldn’t mitigate harm and could result in migrant children being returned to the same conditions they fled in their home countries. At the end of March, there were 2,173 children in the custody of the ORR, and their average stay was more than six months long, according to the Administration for Children and Families.

Andrew Nixon, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, told CNN the department was “focused on resolving cases involving unaccompanied children as quickly and efficiently as possible, consistent with the law.”

“Many of these children are at risk of trafficking and exploitation, and in some cases are brought across the border by cartels under dangerous and coercive conditions. Moving cases forward helps disrupt those networks and ensures children are returned to safe environments as quickly as possible,” he said. “Reducing time in custody also lowers taxpayer costs and ensures the system is operating as intended.”