The Migrant Children Payment That Has Advocates Worried

Immigration attorneys say a new practice inside the US immigration system has them worried: children as young as five are being offered cash to leave the country. The migrant children payment, described by lawyers as a three thousand dollar incentive for what the government calls voluntary departure, was first detailed in an October 9 Bloomberg Law report. Since then, a Department of Homeland Security official has confirmed that the money is real.

Two heads of legal organizations representing minors told Bloomberg Law that immigration attorneys working for Immigration and Customs Enforcement have emailed legal aid groups about the migrant children payment, and that some immigration judges have described the offer from the bench. In some cases, the children heard the proposal in court with no lawyer beside them. One attorney said an eleven-year-old client received the offer this week. DHS had not answered Bloomberg's request for comment when the story ran. The same dynamic has surfaced in federal court battles over how far immigration enforcement can go, including the sanctuary city lawsuit a judge blocked this week.

What the government confirmed

Four days later, ABC News reported that a DHS official confirmed the migrant children payment, as summarized in MigraPrep's account of the confirmation. According to that report, the official said unaccompanied migrant children in government custody who are fourteen or older and have no gang affiliation are eligible for the payment. A DHS spokesperson said Secretary Markwayne Mullin is leading efforts to rescue these children and stop their exploitation.

The spokesperson told ABC News that many unaccompanied children who crossed the border were placed with sponsors who were smugglers and sex traffickers, and said the administration takes the responsibility to protect children seriously. The ABC report also said the migrant children payment expands a program that began last year, when DHS offered minors two thousand five hundred dollars to leave voluntarily. A legal service provider told ABC News that the three thousand dollar version began earlier this month.

Why advocates say a child cannot agree to this

Child advocates do not dispute that the government framed the money as voluntary. Their argument is that a five-year-old hearing a cash offer in a courtroom is in no position to give meaningful consent. Shaina Aber, executive director of the Acacia Center for Justice, said children are being asked to make a decision on the spot about something incredibly consequential, according to an October 18 immigration roundup by researcher Austin Kocher. The center's leaders and the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights both reported that ICE attorneys and immigration judges have presented the offer to children as young as five.

That roundup noted that more than sixteen thousand five hundred cases involving unaccompanied children were still pending in immigration court as of July, based on Justice Department data. The migrant children payment offers come after the administration ended its contract with Acacia's legal service providers and assembled a team of government attorneys to represent migrant children in court instead. Immigration advocacy groups have objected to that arrangement, arguing that the same government trying to deport the children should not also be representing them. DHS has defended the switch as a way to vet sponsors and protect minors.

The funding behind the children's legal defense has shifted too. The Trump administration ended its contract with the legal service providers under Acacia's unaccompanied children program at the end of July, according to the Acacia Center for Justice. That decision left many children facing the migrant children payment offers without the independent lawyers who used to sit beside them, and attorneys say that is one reason the new incentive landed so hard.

What happens next is unclear. The confirmation from the DHS official covers children fourteen and older in custody, while the attorneys' accounts describe the migrant children payment reaching younger children, sometimes without representation and sometimes framed as a one-time deal. The gap between the two versions is where the story now sits. Similar pressure has played out abroad, where migration activists in Greece face trial for helping people on the move.