President Donald Trump’s deputies have reformed the Democrats’ 2008 “Unaccompanied Alien Children” (UAC) program to shrink migrant smuggling by labor traffickers and by illegal migrant parents.
“This is another big win,” said the Immigration Accountability Project. “It would mean fewer children handed over to sex or labor traffickers.”
But Democrat-affiliated pro-migration groups lament the reforms, which will require government officials to verify the legal or illegal status of people who volunteer to “sponsor” the many youth migrants who are welcomed across the border and housed in government-funded hostels.
“The real goal of this effort is … to use custody and care data on these children to track any undocumented adults supporting them,” complained Jeff Nesbit, a pro-migration deputy in President Joe Biden’s administration. “Sadly, Trump’s immigration enforcement team appears determined to use them as propaganda pieces of a larger — and ugly — political game,” he wrote on February 13.
The changes come as Trump’s deputies systematically shut down a series of quasi-legal migration routes used by Biden’s deputies to import roughly nine million additional low-wage workers, taxpayer-supported consumers, and apartment-sharing renters into American workplaces and communities.
The new verification process will likely deter illegal migrants from using the UAC program to bring their left-behind children up to the United States. It will likely also deter labor traffickers from using the UAC program to bring older teenagers into the United States for low-wage labor or prostitution.
The result will be fewer deaths and rapes, less exploitation of teenagers in U.S. jobs and prostitution, labor, and more young men and money for investment in poor countries.
The UAC law was passed unanimously in 2008 by House legislators amid a surplus of naivete, recklessness, and pro-migration cunning. Since then, Republicans have increasingly called for reform because the law has been exploited to import more than a million children and youths across the nation’s border.
The program was justified as a way to protect young people who were abandoned by traffickers who profited from labor and sex trafficking. But it was quickly converted into a coyote/federal delivery service for illegal migrants who wanted their left-behind children to join them in the United States rather than for them to return home.
It was also used by labor traffickers eager to get young men through the border for subsequent low-wage work in blackmarket jobs. At least 50 percent of the young UAC migrants were work-ready teenage boys and men.
In Trump’s first term, his deputies tried to curb the smuggling. For example, in 2018, deputies arrested 170 “sponsors” mostly because they were illegal migrants who paid coyotes to deliver their children via the government-supported UAC delivery service.
In response, Democrats — led. by Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) — used their power in the Senate in 2019 to gag information exchange between the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The HHS agency houses and feeds the children and youths before they are released to sponsors.
The Democrats’ gag encouraged more child and youth smuggling and abuse in President Joe Biden’s administration, with the zealous help of Biden’s pro-migration border chief, Alejandro Mayorkas.
His officials welcomed 500,000 young migrants through the UAC loophole to cross the border during his four years. The flood was caused when Biden’s migrants brought up their children and when labor traffickers dangled more jobs to poor young men in Central America.
In February 2023, the New York Times posted articles on labor traffickers and the workplace deaths of foreign teenagers. The news prompted a short-lived murmur of concern among Democrats.
Youth sex trafficking and its myriad cruelties tripled under President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, according to an October 2024 report in TheFreePress.com. There was little response from Democrats, who are dominated by business advocates for more migration.
Even after these exposures, Democrats encouraged more child migrants. In December, for example, Biden’s pro-migration deputies posted a legal notice discouraging communication between HHS and ICE.
The quick handovers were justified as a child-protection measure by Democrats.
Officials “need to make sure that families [including illegal migrants] come forward to take custody of these [youth and] children, so they’re not held any longer [by HHS] than is necessary,” Greg Chen, the government relations director for the American Immigration Lawyers Association, told the Washington Post.
Trump’s 2025 deputies, however, understand the smuggling business.
Mellissa Harper, an ICE official, has been appointed as acting director of HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement, which cares for the children and youths and hands them over to sponsors. In an e-mail sent on February 13, she wrote, “The pervasive fraud in the sponsor process is undeniable,” and she rebuked the ORR staff:
I also am aware that there are internal and external stakeholders that subscribe to the belief that some fraud is necessary because they are opposed to the overall immigration system of the U.S. or just fail to recognize that their own actions are possibly contributing to the victimization of children.
On February 14, for example, officials posted new rules for HHS officials at the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) who deliver young migrants to sponsors:
To enhance the safety of releases to sponsors, prevent fraud, and combat trafficking, effective immediately, ORR will:
Require fingerprinting of all adult sponsors and their adult household members aged 18 and over, and adult caregivers identified in a Sponsor Care Plan. All potential sponsor, household member, and adult caregiver fingerprint results must be received, adjudicated, and recorded in the UAC Portal prior to approval for release.
Only accept unexpired and legible photocopies of identification documents for purposes of establishing identity under UAC Policy Guide …
Require potential sponsors, adult household members, and adult caregivers identified in a sponsor care plan, to present original unexpired versions (not photocopies) … Sponsors must also present the same original and unexpired identification documents upon the physical release of the child to the potential sponsor.
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has also hired a former border officer to serve as an adviser.
So far, media coverage in the establishment media of the Trump policy has ignored the organized labor trafficking of youths and is silent about the illegal migrants who use the program to import their left-behind children. Instead, the youths and children are falsely portrayed as solitary migrants who take it upon themselves to walk up to the United States border.
For example, Bloomberg.com’s coverage of the issue is typical for how it hides the sex and labor smuggling and the prevalence of older teenagers, as it says:
The Trump administration has resumed sharing sensitive information about people who come forward to sponsor unaccompanied migrant children with immigration authorities, a move that is expected to keep children in government custody for longer, according to two people familiar with the policy.
…
“When ORR gave information to DHS it prevented [illegal migrant] families from being able to get their kids out of government custody and into their safe and loving homes,” [Becky Wolozin, a lawyer at the National Center for Youth Law] said. “This policy just represents family separation in another form.”
…
The [2018 crackdown] also resulted in an increase in the number of children in ORR’s custody and in the length of their stay. By fiscal 2018, an unaccompanied child’s length of stay had increased to 60 days from 48 in the year prior, and early in fiscal 2019 it stood at 89 days, according to a Congressional Research Service report. Studies have found that time in institutional care has a negative effect on children’s health, a concern that was the subject of lawsuits challenging the policy in 2018.
The New York Times February 2023 article was more honest: “Twelve-year-old roofers in Florida and Tennessee. Underage slaughterhouse workers in Delaware, Mississippi and North Carolina. Children sawing planks of wood on overnight shifts in South Dakota.”
Read about migrant sex trafficking here.