By Marisa Taylor, Ted Hesson and Kristina Cooke

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Trump administration is directing immigration agents to track down hundreds of thousands of migrant children who entered the United States without their parents, expanding the president’s mass deportation effort, according to an internal memo reviewed by Reuters.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo outlines an unprecedented push to target migrant children who crossed the border illegally as unaccompanied minors. It lays out four phases of implementation, beginning with a planning phase on January 27, though it did not provide a start date for enforcement operations.

More than 600,000 immigrant children have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border without a parent or legal guardian since 2019, according to government data, as the number of migrants caught crossing illegally reached record levels.

Tens of thousands have been ordered deported over the same time frame, including more than 31,000 for missing court hearings, immigration court data show.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and ICE did not respond to a request for comment about the memo and the Trump administration’s plans.

During his first term, Trump introduced a “zero tolerance” policy that led to the separation of migrant children from their parents at the border. The children were sent to children’s shelters run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), a government agency housed within the Department of Health and Human Services, while their parents were detained or deported.

The separation of families, including babies from nursing mothers, was met with widespread international outrage. Trump halted the policy in 2018, though up to 1,000 children may still remain separated from parents, according to Lee Gelernt, the lead American Civil Liberties Union attorney in a related legal challenge. 

As well as enforcing immigration laws, the memo, headlined the “Unaccompanied Alien Children Joint Initiative Field Implementation,” said the initiative aims to ensure that children are not victims of human trafficking or other forms of exploitation.

The memo said the children would be served a notice to appear in immigration court or deported, if deportation orders were pending against them. 

In the memo, ICE said it had collected data from a number of sources on unaccompanied minors and sorted them into three priority groups, “flight risk”, “public safety” and “border security.”

It directed agents to focus on children deemed “flight risks” – including those ordered deported for missing court hearings and those released to sponsors who are not blood relatives. 

The agency uses several databases and government records to track down targets.  

DNA TESTS

Under the law, migrants who have exhausted their legal options to stay can be removed, even if they are children. But the U.S. government has limited resources and typically prioritizes arresting adults with criminal records. 

Unaccompanied children began arriving in large numbers a decade ago due to violence and economic instability in their home countries – and U.S. immigration policies that enabled them to enter and often remain.

The majority are from Central America and Mexico. Some migrated to join parents already in the United States; many traveled with family members or smugglers.

From ORR custody, children are released to sponsors, usually parents or relatives, as immigration authorities weigh their cases to remain in the country.

Trump’s border czar Tom Homan has repeatedly claimed that some 300,000 unaccompanied children went missing during Biden’s presidency and were at risk of trafficking and exploitation. Beyond initial follow-up calls, ORR was not obligated to track the whereabouts of the children after they left custody. Many are now adults or living with their parents.

Individual ICE field offices will determine “how to best locate, make contact, and serve immigration documents as appropriate for individual targets, when conducting enforcement actions,” involving unaccompanied children, the memo said.

Because the children often live in households with adults without authorization to be in the United States, their addresses could also help ICE boost its overall arrest numbers.  

During his first administration, Trump used data gathered to vet sponsors of unaccompanied children to target them for arrests.

Since taking office on January 20, Trump has taken steps to tighten vetting of sponsors. 

These include requiring sponsors and adult household members to submit fingerprints for background checks, according to guidance issued last week.

 The Trump administration has also expanded its access to ORR’s database of children and their sponsors, two sources familiar with the matter said.  

Mellissa Harper, a former ICE official who now heads ORR, told a staff meeting on Thursday that the agency plans to use DNA tests to establish familial relationships, one of the sources said. It was unclear whether DNA tests would be used only on cases that raised a red flag, or on a routine basis.

Harper said at the meeting that ICE was pursuing 247,000 tips related to fraud, trafficking and smuggling of unaccompanied minors and referring cases to the FBI for further investigation, the person said. 

(Reporting by Marisa Taylor and Ted Hesson in Washington, D.C. and Kristina Cooke in San Francisco; Editing by Mary Milliken and Suzanne Goldenberg)

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