A federal judge issued an injunction Monday against new rules the Trump administration adopted to try to keep illegal-immigrant minors from being placed with unsafe sponsors, saying it was too hasty a move that abruptly changed the playing field for children already in the pipeline.
Judge Dabney Friedrich, a Trump appointee to the court in Washington, said the administration retains discretion over how and when to release specific children to sponsors.
But she said the categorical rules written by Health and Human Services — which cares for the children — were unfair to kids already seeking sponsors.
She did not, however, strike down another Trump change that allows the government to consider sponsors’ own illegal-immigrant status against them in deciding whether to release kids to them.
The kids in question, known as Unaccompanied Alien Children or UACs, arrive at the border without parents and — if they come from countries other than Mexico or Canada — are required to be processed and released to HHS, which searches for sponsors.
UACs have flooded the U.S. in recent years, with the Biden administration recording as many as 18,000 a month. Desperate to get the children out the door, Biden officials reduced background checks on sponsors.
That led to tens of thousands of children that have disappeared, unable to be located in follow-up inquiries.
Now, with President Trump having dramatically cut border numbers, the children have slowed to a trickle and the new administration has stiffened the checks.
HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) said it was limiting use of a foreign passport, birth certificate or ID card as proof of identification, and requiring very specific proof of income, such as a tax return, 60 days’ worth of pay stubs or verification by an employer.
Judge Friedrich said that for kids already in the pipeline who’d secured sponsors and were awaiting release, the changes unfairly upended that.
She pointed to one child who had previously been released to a sister, ended up back in custody because he was caught driving without a license, and is now stuck because his sister can no longer qualify under the new rules.
“This ruling does not obligate ORR to approve any particular sponsor or to release any individual child. Nor does it prevent ORR from imposing more rigorous sponsor documentation requirements and thoroughly vetting sponsors on a case-by-case basis,” the judge wrote. “It merely prevents the agency from creating a new blanket policy that departs from its previous one without explaining how it weighed the disrupted reliance interests against other valid considerations.”
The Trump administration has been focused heavily on the kids, after cases arose in the Biden years of children forced into labor or who turned to crime.
One migrant who entered as a UAC has been convicted of the vicious slaying of Kayla Hamilton, a 20-year-old, in Maryland in 2022.
The Washington Times reported last week that Homeland Security has been performing checks on children and has only been able to locate them in 5% of the 100,000 inquiries made so far.
