Episode Details
Back to Episodes
ICE Is Taking Kids From Their Parents And Labeling Them "Unaccompanied"
Description
ICE is arresting parents inside the United States, taking their kids, and stamping those kids “unaccompanied” so it can lock them in federal shelters and foster care for months. Mother Jones found kids as young as 8.
Under Biden this almost never happened. Under Trump, kids taken inside the country instead of at the border are now about 1 in 5 of the children sent to these shelters, and lawyers think it’s closing in on half. Kids used to be held about a month. Now the average is more than six.
In April, ICE arrested a Venezuelan dad outside his home in El Paso with his 11-year-old son. Around midnight, officers took the boy away. His dad begged them, said his son needed him. They told the kid he’d be in touch with his father. Then ICE labeled him unaccompanied, a child alone in America. He wasn’t alone. His stepmom was here and tried to take him home, but she didn’t have a taxpayer ID number, so the government wouldn’t release him to her.
The dad didn’t hear anything for about five days. When he did, he said, “You kidnapped my son.” The boy got bounced through hotel rooms in Arizona, then foster care in Texas. More than three months later, the government sent him back to Venezuela by himself and never told his mom when he’d land. An 11-year-old sat outside an airport in Venezuela until dark, until his lawyer helped his mom find him. His lawyer said, “They literally were gonna fly an 11-year-old boy by himself and just dump him in Venezuela.”
Homeland Security’s official statement: “ICE does not separate families.” Oh, okay. So the 11-year-old in Texas foster care was just on a really long sleepover.
And if a relative does step up to take one of these kids home, it might cost them. The agency holding these children shares what it learns with ICE. Reuters found more than 12,000 people have been arrested off those tips. One lawyer said, “They are using the children as bait.” The agency that’s supposed to protect these kids is running a lost and found where the guy behind the counter has handcuffs.
A former deputy director of that agency says the point is “to make sure no one ever sends their kids to the US again.” So the policy is to traumatize enough children that word gets around. What the actual feck.
The Trump administration did this in 2018. The whole country saw kids in cages, and the backlash got so bad Trump signed an order to end it. Now it’s back, just harder to see. They moved it from the border to your neighbor’s driveway and gave it a nicer label.
Unaccompanied. That’s what they call a kid after they take his dad.
Sources:
My posts are always free. My rent is not. Subscribe to keep me yelling.
Get full access to The Rogue Voice aka Linsay Rousseau at linsayrousseau.substack.com/subscribe