The Government Stealing Kids: Protections for Immigrant Children Are Being Dissolved – A Crime Against Humanity

Imagine this: It’s a Tuesday morning. Your child, or your grandchild, or the neighbor’s kid you see playing in the yard, is on their way to school. Or perhaps they’re on a family vacation, laughing in the back seat. Maybe they’re just with a babysitter while you’re at work. Suddenly, without warning, without a warrant, without a shred of due process, they are gone. Taken. Disappeared into a system that calls them “inmates” and treats them like criminals.

This isn’t a dystopian novel. This is happening now, in America. The Trump administration is systematically dissolving every protection for immigrant children, turning what was once a child welfare system into an enforcement arm, and committing what can only be described as state-sanctioned kidnapping. This is one of the most immoral acts that can possibly be committed, and it is a crime against humanity unfolding before our very eyes.

The Cold, Hard Truth: Children Alone in the Crosshairs

Meet Brian, age 7. He sat alone before a judge in a Manhattan courtroom, his voice barely a whisper. “Would you like some candy?” the judge asked. “No,” he replied. Brian is one of thousands of children caught in removal proceedings, most without lawyers, all stranded in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). ORR, by its very mandate, is supposed to reunify children with vetted sponsors, usually family. But Donald Trump is president again, and with Stephen Miller, the architect of his first-term family separations, at his side, children are once again fair game.

The numbers are horrifying. Since March, at least 150 children have been sent to a newly reopened ICE detention facility in Dilley, Texas, a place where staff refer to children as “inmates.” Across the country, 2,400 children are languishing in ORR shelters, their average length of stay skyrocketing from 35 days in January to a staggering 191 days by May. Imagine your child held for six months, simply for being a child in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The administration has erected impossible barriers to reunification. Parents, desperate to reclaim their children, are forced to produce U.S. identification, income verification, and even DNA tests. Biological mothers and fathers are being blocked from their own children. They submit baby photos, baptismal records, text messages – anything to prove their bond – only to be rejected. A Guatemalan couple, whose DNA matched their 6-year-old son, has been denied for three months and counting. This isn’t about safety; it’s about psychological warfare, a deliberate tactic to “scare the daylights out of people” and force families to self-deport.

A System Weaponized: From Protection to Persecution

The transformation of ORR is a chilling betrayal. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Health and Human Services Secretary who oversees ORR, has publicly declared the refugee office a “collaborator in child trafficking” – a baseless claim used as a pretext to obliterate the firewall between protective agencies and immigration enforcement. A former DHS official now heads ORR, and DHS investigators, specializing in combatting crime, not child welfare, are conducting “surprise ‘wellness checks'” at children’s homes and schools. These visits, supposedly for “well-being,” conveniently turn up older children and adults who are “more easily deportable.” An ICE memo even instructs investigators to sort children by “flight risk” and “public safety” threats, and to inspect children as young as 12 for “gang-related” tattoos. This is not child protection; it is profiling and terror.

The legal system, meant to be a bulwark against such abuses, is under direct assault. Federal funding for legal representation for unaccompanied migrant children has been canceled, leaving thousands to face deportation proceedings alone. Deferred-action status, which once froze removal proceedings, is being revoked. Undocumented toddlers are now appearing on deportation dockets.

And then there’s the Flores Settlement. This landmark 1997 legal agreement set basic standards for the care and release of migrant children, limiting their detention time. The Trump administration is actively moving to end it, arguing that new legislation and policies make it “unnecessary.” If they succeed, ICE would be free to detain children indefinitely, with minimal independent oversight, in facilities like Dilley. This is, as one lawyer starkly puts it, “a perfect storm of state-sanctioned child abuse.”

The Horrors of Detention: “Treating Children Like Criminals”

The conditions inside these detention facilities are a testament to the government’s lack of humanity. Lawyers visiting Dilley describe a 50-acre compound where detainees are under constant video surveillance, lights stay on 24/7, and children exhibit distressing behaviors: a toddler throwing himself on the floor, a young child losing eight pounds, others expressing suicidal thoughts. Children who were once on football teams and cheerleading squads, taking standardized tests, are now in lockup, assigned to trailers with names like “Yellow 2.”

Imagine your child, taken from school, from home, from safety. One woman recounted how ICE agents, guns drawn, retrieved her 3-year-old son from his babysitter’s house after she was pulled over for a traffic stop. Another mother, whose 9- and 6-year-old children were detained with her, reported that her son with leukemia had no explanation for how he would receive treatment, and her daughter had stopped eating. Families are held for 42, 52 days, children suffering from diarrhea, parents reporting staff treating people “like dogs.” A 13-year-old girl, detained for four months with her younger sisters, is having nightmares and has stopped eating, worried she “messed up” her asylum interview. “I feel really sad and angry all the time,” she declared. “I hate it here.” This is precisely what the administration intends: to ramp up psychological pressure to force families out.

The scale of this cruelty is set to explode. The new ICE budget allocates a staggering $45 billion to build more detention facilities, including “family detention” centers, with plans to increase the average daily population to 100,000 people. This is not an accident; it is a deliberate, funded expansion of child imprisonment.

Fighting Back: Glimmers of Resistance Against the Immoral

Amidst this darkness, there are glimmers of resistance. Legal advocates and human rights organizations are fighting tirelessly, challenging these policies in court.

• A federal judge has ordered the reinstatement of funding for legal representation for unaccompanied migrant children, at least for now, citing concerns about anti-trafficking laws.
• Just days ago, a federal judge in New Hampshire issued a preliminary injunction, blocking President Trump’s executive order restricting birthright citizenship nationwide, calling the deprivation of U.S. citizenship “irreparable harm.” This class-action lawsuit represents every child affected.
• Another federal judge in California has issued orders to halt indiscriminate immigration stops and arrests and barred restrictions on attorney access at a Los Angeles detention facility, citing Fourth and Fifth Amendment violations.
• The ACLU has filed a class-action lawsuit seeking to stop ICE agents from arresting migrants at immigration courts, arguing it strips them of due process and chills participation in the legal process.
• The Illinois Head Start Association is expanding its lawsuit against the Trump administration to include new immigration status checks that unlawfully bar undocumented children from early childhood programs.

These are not full victories, but crucial battles won, providing temporary relief and exposing the government’s actions. They are proof that the fight is not over, and that legal challenges, though arduous, can push back against this cruelty.

A Crime Against Humanity: We Must Act

This is not merely a policy debate; it is a moral catastrophe. The government has no sense of humanity, no conscience to tell them right from wrong. They are committing one global crime after another, and we, as a society, are allowing it.

All people have a fundamental right to a home, to food, and to live where they can be comfortable and live peaceful lives. This is a universal human right that transcends borders and political agendas. When governments engage in what amounts to the kidnapping and psychological torture of children, it is our collective duty to respond.

We must demand accountability. We must demand that our governments reflect the conscience and compassion that they currently lack. We must support the organizations fighting on the front lines. Because until we collectively push back, until we make our outrage undeniable, the lines will continue to blur, and the most vulnerable among us will continue to pay the horrific price. This must stop.