{"id":566,"date":"2026-06-13T17:37:04","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T17:37:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movingandmortgagehub.com\/?p=566"},"modified":"2026-06-13T17:37:04","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T17:37:04","slug":"the-department-of-homeland-security-is-kidnapping-peoples-kids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movingandmortgagehub.com\/?p=566","title":{"rendered":"The Department of Homeland Security Is \u201cKidnapping People\u2019s Kids\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Homeland Security Secretary<\/span> Markwayne Mullin and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche gave a press conference on Thursday to tell reporters about 300,000 supposedly\u201cmissing\u201d immigrant children. These were unaccompanied minors who\u2019d crossed the border alone during the Biden administration, before being apprehended by the government and thenquickly released to sponsors\u2014typically adult relatives.<\/p>

Read more The Plague in the Shadows<\/a><\/p>\n

Mullin and Blanche claimed the Biden administration lost track of these children, and that many ended up with adults who purported to be family but were actually criminals who abused them. \u201cKids now have been paying for it,\u201d Mullin said. \u201cThey have been getting raped over and over and over again because the previous administration chose not to enforce our nation\u2019s laws and protect the most vulnerable.\u201d<\/p>\n

The claim that 300,000 unaccompanied minors went missing has already been thoroughly and repeatedly debunked. Still, over the past year, the Trump administration has used this misleading narrative as justification to go out and find these kids. Officials have gotten back in touch with nearly 150,000, whether calling or visiting their homes or encountering them in the community. Hundreds have been re-detained. Their sponsors must then be re-vetted before the kids can be released.<\/p>\n

The administration says it\u2019s doing this for the good of the children. \u201cWe are going to rescue as many kids as we possibly can,\u201d Mullin said. And it\u2019s true that there have been some horrific cases: The press conference was pegged to the indictment of three people who allegedly lied about their identities to gain custody of minors; a fourth man was sentenced for raping a girl in his care.<\/p>\n

But lawyers around the country who work with unaccompanied children paint a remarkably different picture. They tell me that abuse by fake sponsors is relatively rare, and that most sponsors really are who they say they are: family members. The Trump administration, by and large, isn\u2019t saving kids\u2014it\u2019s separating them from loved ones and putting them in detention for months on end.<\/p>\n

Unaccompanied minors taken into custodyat the end of the Biden administration were held by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) for about 37 days on average. Under the Trump administration, the average is about six months, and many children have been detainedmore than a year. \u201cA majority of the kids in our facilities today have biological parents who want them home, and there\u2019s no reason the government shouldn\u2019t be releasing them,\u201d says Jessica Richardson, an attorney whose nonprofit, The Door, works with detained kids in New York.<\/p>\n

\u201cFamily separation under the first Trump administration got so much attention, and DHS is doing it again, but with everything else they\u2019re doing it hasn\u2019t gotten the attention it deserves,\u201d says Jen Smyers, who served as ORR\u2019s deputy director under Biden. \u201cDHS is kidnapping people\u2019s kids.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the press conference, Angie Salazar, Trump\u2019s acting ORR director, touted more stringent vetting requirements for sponsors\u2014families must jump through many more hoops than before to prove they\u2019re worthy of getting their kids back. The process, Salazar said, \u201cshould mirror the standards of the American foster care system,\u201d with \u201crigorous background checks, vetting of caregivers, financial stability verification, and home visits before a child is turned over.\u201d<\/p>\n

Several families are now suing, arguing that the new requirements have led to detention periods that are too lengthy and violate the Flores<\/em> agreement, a court settlement requiring kids to be released from government care \u201cwithout unnecessary delay.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act also requires ORR to \u201cpromptly\u201d place unaccompanied minors \u201cin the least restrictive setting that is in the best interest of the child.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cThese children have been forced to spend extremely long periods of time away from their family, friends, school and community without justification,\u201d notes the families\u2019 complaint, which wasfiled by Democracy Forward and the National Center for Youth Law. <\/p>

Read more Why No Human Being Should Ever Be Allowed to Have a Trillion Dollars<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cIt is not right that I have to stay here for so long when I have someone to take care of me who knows me and loves me,\u201d a child told the court in another similar lawsuit. \u201cI don\u2019t know if I can tolerate it much longer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Under Biden, says Michigan-based attorney Ana Raquel Devereaux, who works with unaccompanied minors, parents could \u201creceive the child in a relatively swift manner. Now, the barriers to sponsor reunification are so significant that, from our perspective, sponsor reunification is essentially nonexistent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Acting director Salazar said at the press conference that ORR is \u201cprioritizing child safety over placement speed.\u201d<\/p>\n

But is holding kids for months, or even a year or more, really good for them? ORR facilities are often called shelters, but they are \u201cessentially prisons,\u201d says attorney Richardson. \u201cThey have specific times they are allowed to shower and use the bathroom. Specific times they are allowed to go to get food.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some of the detained kids are having suicidal ideation, depression, and anxiety because of the lengthy detention, or are acting out or running away. \u201cORR is meant to be a very, very short-term place for unaccompanied children,\u201d notes Smyers, the former ORR official.<\/p>\n

Among the plaintiffs is Diego N., a 14-year-old who\u2019d been living with his father in Texas. Since being re-detained, \u201che has little privacy,\u201d the complaint states. \u201cHe misses being able to go outside for fresh air when he wants to and being able to talk to his friends.\u201d Detention has interrupted his schooling\u2014ORR classes are primarily focused on basic language skills: \u201cHe is being taught how to name fruits in English when he should be a freshman at his public high school.\u201d<\/p>\n

Younger kids are confused about why they\u2019re detained at all, says Alexa Sendukas, an attorney in Texas. \u201cIt\u2019s incredibly stressful and confusing, especially for the little ones. They don\u2019t understand why they can\u2019t get out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rather than saving these kids, she says, the administration is using them \u201cas bait.\u201d Last year, ORR began requiring sponsors to attend in-person meetings to verify their identification documents\u2014and sometimes ICE arrests them when they show up. \u201cWe\u2019re seeing family members detained,\u201d says Sendukas. (This week, federal agents raided the offices of organizations that provide legal services to unaccompanied minors, to gather more information.)<\/p>\n

Kids are so terrified for their parents that some decide not to go through the sponsorship process at all. Mario C., a 17-year-old plaintiff who\u2019s been detained for months, wants to live with his mom, but he\u2019s considering foster care instead because he doesn\u2019t want to risk her arrest. Other kids are so desperate to get out of detention that they self-deport, returning to countries where they haven\u2019t lived in years, even though their parents are in the United States. <\/p>\n

Trump officials remember the public outrage that ensued after they split up kids and parents at the border in 2017. Now they\u2019re splitting them up in the interior and holding press conferences about saving missing children to justify it. They want to make their activities more palatable to the public.<\/p>

Read more The UFC\u2019s Biggest Cards Nearly Always Include Women. Except at Freedom 250.<\/a><\/p>\n

But even rebranded, family separation is still justfamily separation.<\/p>\n<\/article>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Trump officials claim, falsely, that they are splitting up families for the children\u2019s benefit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":564,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Department of Homeland Security Is \u201cKidnapping People\u2019s Kids\u201d - Moving and Mortgage Hub<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/movingandmortgagehub.com\/?p=566\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Department of Homeland Security Is \u201cKidnapping People\u2019s Kids\u201d - Moving and Mortgage Hub\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Trump officials claim, falsely, that they are splitting up families for the children\u2019s benefit.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/movingandmortgagehub.com\/?p=566\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Moving and Mortgage Hub\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-06-13T17:37:04+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/movingandmortgagehub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/e8e5e9539938c1584e66b80b0bb27478.webp\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"2000\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1124\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/webp\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movingandmortgagehub.com\\\/?p=566#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movingandmortgagehub.com\\\/?p=566\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movingandmortgagehub.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/6b7c79bcfd888d98f34c5413df7e81a2\"},\"headline\":\"The Department of Homeland Security Is \u201cKidnapping People\u2019s Kids\u201d\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-06-13T17:37:04+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movingandmortgagehub.com\\\/?p=566\"},\"wordCount\":1222,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movingandmortgagehub.com\\\/?p=566#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movingandmortgagehub.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/cc5073cb3828b28bc0a277e75fe82f53.webp\",\"articleSection\":[\"Politics\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/movingandmortgagehub.com\\\/?p=566#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movingandmortgagehub.com\\\/?p=566\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movingandmortgagehub.com\\\/?p=566\",\"name\":\"The Department of Homeland Security Is \u201cKidnapping People\u2019s Kids\u201d - 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