The so-called “resettlement stipend” pressures vulnerable children to abandon their legal protections. Behind the offer of money is a message: Give up, go home and disappear.
The Trump administration’s vendetta against unaccompanied immigrant children continued last week with a new scheme to pay children $2,500 to “voluntarily” give up their legal rights and return to their home country. It’s a disingenuous and dangerous form of coercion that risks the lives and well-being of vulnerable children and youth.
Initial reports from advocates suggested that the Department of Homeland Security would transmit letters to unaccompanied minors ages 14 to 17 currently in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), offering them money to withdraw their legal claims and ask for “voluntary departure.”
As part of the operation, supposedly dubbed “Freaky Friday,” children who declined the offer would be ineligible for release to a sponsor—staying in custody for the duration of their cases—and could endanger their parents’ immigration status as well. Other reports suggested that the plan could be extended to children as young as 10 and to children already residing in communities.
It appears, for now at least, that the scheme is more limited, but no less insidious.
Piecing together various ICE statements and social media posts, as well as messages sent to shelter care providers and legal service providers, the current plan appears to offer children ages 14 to 17 who have expressed an interest in voluntarily returning and are in ORR custody a “resettlement stipend” of $2,500. ORR care providers are instructed to facilitate a meeting between the child, legal service providers and ICE.
If the child “agrees to the stipend,” ICE will generate a form for signature and submit it to the immigration judge. ORR care providers may be required to provide available contact information for parents or other responsible adult contacts in the home country.
Discharge from ORR custody will take place only after an immigration judge approves the withdrawal. The child will receive the funds only after returning to the home country.
ICE maintains that the stipend is part of its new initiative to offer unaccompanied children a “voluntary option [which] gives [them] a choice and allows them to make an informed decision about their future.”
But voluntary departure, under strict rules designed to ensure a child’s decision is informed and in their best interests, already exists. Legal service providers and child advocates, as well as immigration judges, take pains to explain to children all options and to explore with them, often in consultation with family members, how they wish to proceed.
In other words, the child already has a choice about whether to remain in the United States to seek protection; the government is trying to stack the deck by putting what might be an irresistible incentive in front of kids who opt for voluntary departure.
Given that many children may not yet have an attorney and haven’t been to immigration court, it appears the government may also be counting on an accelerated process to secure the child’s agreement without having the time to fully consult with an attorney or for child advocates to conduct the necessary home studies required to ensure that the child will be able to safely return to their country.
It appears that the government will initiate the request for voluntary departure on behalf of the child—hoping perhaps that the child’s signature will convince the immigration judge to approve the transaction on paper, no questions asked.
Let’s hope immigration judges don’t take the document at face value. The Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 is designed to protect children not only from the threat of trafficking and other harms but from the kind of manipulation evident here. The TVPRA recognizes the unique vulnerabilities of children, consequently authorizing legal services, modified procedures for applying for asylum and other protections, as well as the appointment of child advocates for particularly vulnerable children, including those who are considering self-deportation.
… ensuring that every child can return home safely should be the norm—not a reward for increasing the government’s deportation numbers.
The TVPRA also forbids the government from returning a child, whether through voluntary departure or a removal order, without first ensuring that the child can be safely repatriated. Child advocates conduct assessments regarding the child’s best interests, family and living situation, and the safety risks that will assist the immigration judge in determining whether voluntary departure is appropriate.
Given these protections, I suspect many immigration judges will raise the following questions:
- Does an agreement to accept the stipend equal informed consent? The government does not, in its explanation of the program, describe the child’s agreement to forgo their legal rights and withdraw any efforts to stay in the United States. Instead, the emphasis is on the child’s agreement to take the money. Rather than “helping” the child, it appears the government is attempting to bribe them to give up their legal rights.
- How old is the child? With whom did they consult? Did the child have adequate time to discuss the decision with attorneys and with a child advocate appointed by ORR? (Under current policy guidelines, any child seeking voluntary return is assigned a child advocate.) Has that child advocate conducted a home study and made a recommendation to the court regarding the best interests of the child?
- If this stipend is designed to help the child, why is it limited to children who ask to voluntarily return home? A child who applies for asylum but is denied needs the support to return home every bit as much as a child who decides to withdraw earlier in the process. If the government is truly interested in protecting children, ensuring that every child can return home safely should be the norm—not a reward for increasing the government’s deportation numbers.
Nor is the $2,500 the only evidence that the government is trying to coerce children into forgoing their rights. Many children have been pressured by CBP agents at the border to agree to voluntary departure—with absolutely no legal counsel or other advice.
Twenty-three children’s advocacy groups recently objected to ICE agents conducting interviews with older teenagers in ORR custody, sometimes without counsel present, asking them whether they are interested in returning to their home country. Children in custody are aware of the failed Labor Day effort to deport Guatemalan minors; anxiety over whether the government might force them to return home runs high.
And on Oct. 1, just days before this $2,500 gambit started, ICE issued guidance ordering that all children in custody who turn 18 must be turned over to adult detention. Because ORR only has custody over unaccompanied children until they turn 18, the urgency of finding an appropriate placement increases as the child nears their 18th birthday.
In the past, most children never faced this dilemma because ORR quickly placed them with sponsors. The administration’s current sponsor eligibility requirements have become so onerous, however, that children are averaging six months in custody, placing more of them at risk of aging out before an appropriate sponsor or other living situation can be found.
Incredibly, the first Trump administration had already tried and failed to force all 18 year olds into adult custody—and the resulting order in Garcia Ramirez, et al requiring ICE to place 18 year olds transferred from ORR into the least restrictive custody setting available is still in effect.
Although advocates immediately obtained a temporary injunction against Adult Detention, Round 2, the Trump administration is not likely to let the matter drop because the messaging is more important than the actual outcome.
The Trump administration practices incremental intimidation.
If children are told at the border that they should consider returning home, if they are prevented from reuniting with their families in the United States, and if they hear that they might stay in custody the whole time they are in the U.S., despair will inevitably follow.
If children think about the friends in their shelters who were pulled from their beds in the middle of the night, if they can’t talk to attorneys and other adults who want to help them, and if they learn that they might end up in an adult jail, voluntary departure might start sounding better and better.
It’s called detention fatigue, and children are highly susceptible to it. The government is cynically counting on the $2,500 to push that fatigue into resignation. After all, is it really giving up if you are coming home with cash in hand?
My money, however, is on the children. Despite the “give up and give in” earworm playing almost daily, the children who risked everything to come to the United States are a resilient and brave group of people. Some of them have already said “no,” and pushed back when the government tried to deport them in the middle of the night. Many of them know that they cannot return home safely and that their only hope is in pursuing their claims. And many of them know that the people who love them do not want them to return to the horrible conditions they fled.
If this administration really cared about unaccompanied children, it would stop coercing them and start listening to them. Because clearly, the Trump administration has a lot to learn if they think these tenacious kids will simply go away.
