DOJ Orders Criminal Charges Against Sponsors of Migrant Children

The Justice Department is directing all 93 US attorney’s offices to prosecute adult sponsors of unaccompanied migrant children for fraud and other crimes, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said in an internal memo.

Blanche tasked federal prosecutors with focusing on criminal cases that accuse sponsors of labor or sex trafficking of immigrant children, making false statements, identity theft, and harboring aliens, according to a copy of his Sept. 24 memo that was obtained by Bloomberg Law.

The initiative builds on President Donald Trump’s broader effort to scrutinize the placement of unaccompanied migrant children in the US following investigations of widespread labor trafficking and exploitation during President Joe Biden’s term. Immigrants’ rights advocates and former officials have criticized many recent policy changes for deterring qualified sponsors from stepping forward to care for youth who’ve entered the US without their parents.

“For years, sponsors were not vetted adequately, nor was the welfare of UACs ensured,” Blanche wrote to DOJ employees, using the shorthand for unaccompanied children. “Consequently, UACs have been more vulnerable to and, in some instances, have fallen prey to smuggling, trafficking, sexual assault, and forced labor.”

Blanche called on each US attorney’s office to appoint a UAC coordinator to communicate with law enforcement agencies and facilitate prosecutions in their district. Prosecutors must alert leadership at DOJ headquarters before they determine any UAC-related case doesn’t merit prosecution, and each district will need to report statistics on a quarterly basis on their volume of UAC cases and convictions.

DOJ is one of several agencies Trump has tapped to review the UAC program after Republicans warned of sweeping abuse during the Biden administration, and investigators concluded the Department of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services Department couldn’t keep track of all the children released to sponsors.

The Biden administration, seeking to find homes for an influx of arrivals of unaccompanied children in 2021, loosened some background check requirements for close relatives and halted HHS’s practice of sharing sponsors’ immigration status information with DHS. Republicans say those changes created more risk for children already vulnerable to abuse, while the Biden administration said they helped move children out of shelters and into homes.

The Trump administration has since tightened the vetting process and resumed information-sharing between the agencies — a shift that advocates say discourages family members without legal status from coming forward and result in longer shelter stays for children. The administration has also funneled more money to reviewing prospective sponsors; the GOP tax and spending bill that Trump signed into law this summer includes $300 million for vetting.

The DOJ memo doubles down on the enforcement-oriented approach, with investigations targeting not just alleged trafficking and other crimes but also any immigration-related violations by sponsors, which could include entering the country without authorization or overstaying a visa.

HHS, which cares for unaccompanied children, reported just over 2,000 in its custody as of Thursday, down from more than 6,000 the same time last year.