Politics
Are ICE agent checks on migrant children to protect them or deport them?
WASHINGTON — When immigration agents recently began conducting welfare checks on youths who had arrived at the border unaccompanied by their parents, advocates grew alarmed, fearing the tactic was a cover to target the minors, their adult sponsors and possibly others for deportations.
Stories of these unannounced visits popped up around the country — agents who attempted to gain access to two elementary schools in Los Angeles; agents who showed up “five deep and armed” at the home of an immigration lawyer’s 19-year-old client in Virginia; agents who interviewed a terrified 16-year-old Honduran girl at her uncle’s house in Washington state.
Department of Homeland Security officials have said the welfare checks are part of an ongoing effort to ensure that unaccompanied children “are safe and not being exploited, abused, and sex trafficked.”
Immigrant advocates say some visits have led to children being forced to leave the country with their deported parents or being removed from their sponsors and placed in federal custody.
Advocates point to the case of a 17-year-old Honduran in Hawaii whose older brother had been detained by federal agents. The boy was transported to a facility for unaccompanied youths in California.
“This is just par for the course for an administration that has staked their claim on making life so incredibly difficult for immigrants at large that they think people will leave and not come to the U.S.,” said Jen Smyers, former chief of staff under the Biden administration for the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is responsible for the care of unaccompanied children.
Fear of the welfare checks “drives people underground, increases exploitation and trafficking,” Smyers said. “And they’re doing it with this perverse narrative by saying that they care about kids. But all they’re doing is wrecking these kids’ lives.”
Those under review by the Trump administration are among the roughly 450,000 children who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border without their parents and were released to sponsors during President Biden’s term.
Children who arrive unaccompanied by a parent are placed in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is under the Department of Health and Human Services. The department is required to screen adult sponsors who volunteer to care for the children, usually their parents or other relatives.
Shortly after President Trump took office, his administration formulated a multi-agency plan to track down unaccompanied children, investigate whether they are being subjected to human trafficking and deport those who are removable. An internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo, obtained by The Times, details the four-phase operation.
The memo indicates that agents should prioritize youths who didn’t show up for an immigration hearing, those whom the government has not been able to contact since they were released to sponsors, those who are considered a threat to public safety and those with deportation orders.
The agency is also looking closely at youths released from federal custody to sponsors who are not blood relatives, including so-called super sponsors who have taken in more than three unaccompanied children.
The sponsorship program has been beset by problems in recent years. The federal government has failed to properly vet some sponsors, according to a federal watchdog report from last year. Thousands of children rapidly released from government shelters were later exploited by major companies.
Last month, a federal grand jury indicted a man on allegations that he lured a 14-year-old girl from Guatemala to the U.S. and falsely claimed she was his sister to gain custody as her sponsor.
About 100 children have been removed from their sponsors this year and returned to federal custody, the Associated Press reported, and 450 cases with complaints have been referred to federal law enforcement.
The review of sponsorships under the Trump administration is being led by two branches of ICE: Enforcement and Removal Operations, or ERO, and Homeland Security Investigations, or HSI.
Along with combating human trafficking, the effort aims to identify possible candidates for deportation. Referring to unaccompanied children as “UAC,” the memo states: “ERO officers should remember they are to enforce final orders of removal, where possible, and HSI will pursue criminal options for UAC who have committed crimes.”
The Homeland Security and Health and Human Services departments did not respond to a request for comment.
Over the last two months, immigration attorneys say, agents have attempted to intimidate minors.
In one instance in California, underage clients answered the door to find agents in casual wear asking about their mother and whether they had a job. Another family reported to their attorney that HSI agents arrived while the minor was at school, yet the agents returned four times in one day looking for the student.
The tactic puts in jeopardy sponsors who lack legal authorization to be in the country or live in mixed-status households, said Karina Ramos, a managing attorney at the Los Angeles-based Immigrant Defenders Law Center.
“It’s definitely going to have a chilling effect on a sponsor, if they know there are going to be immigration officers questioning their status,” she said.
The case of the teenager in Hawaii began April 9 when his older brother was arrested on suspicion of misdemeanor illegal entry, according to someone with knowledge of the case.
The teen had entered the country unaccompanied and was previously in federal custody in Texas. He was released to his older brother’s care in 2023. According to the person with knowledge of the case, when the teen was apprehended last month, agents considered whether they could deport him along with his brother.
After his older brother was apprehended, the 17-year-old was placed in a facility for unaccompanied youths in California. Hawaii has no Office of Refugee Resettlement facilities.
Before he was transported to California, teachers who knew the student attempted to aid his release, according to local advocates and the Honolulu Civil Beat. The teachers carried documents showing his aunt could take custody of him if he was released to her.
Advocates said there are intersecting operations in Hawaii — welfare checks on unaccompanied children and enforcement actions against deportable immigrants. At least four immigrant children in two separate cases were recently removed with their parents, who were targeted for deportation, advocates said.
“Having a parallel directive to remove grown-ups from children is never in the best interest of the child,” said Mary Miller Flowers, director of policy and legislative affairs at the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights. “So it feels like it’s a euphemism for enforcement actions.”
In other parts of the country, young immigrants and their adult sponsors are grappling with what the welfare checks could spell for them.
In Houston, Alexa Sendukas, managing attorney for the Galveston-Houston Immigrant Representation Project, said 21 clients have experienced welfare checks in recent weeks. Those who let agents inside their homes told her that agents walked from room to room, asking questions and taking photos.
In a meeting last week, HSI agents told Sendukas that they had rescued two children from a trafficking situation in the Houston area and found a sponsor who was producing child exploitation material. But she remains skeptical.
“We’ve heard the example of the Hawaii case,” she said, adding that advocates worry that agents doing welfare checks are gathering information they can use in the future. Referring to the ICE memo, she said, “The guidance suggests a multiphase initiative — what does the next phase look like?”
In San Diego, federal agents recently conducted a wellness check at the residence of a girl represented by immigration attorney Ian Seruelo. She is in the process of receiving special immigration juvenile status, he said.
A day after the wellness check, as the girl was visiting her parents, who live at a different location, federal agents stopped them while they were driving to church and detained them for several hours, Seruelo said.
The parents have no criminal record but are undocumented, and their status was probably known to officials, Seruelo said, because they had been in deportation proceedings that were dropped. Neither the girl nor her parents are in custody, he said.
Seruelo said he found the timing of the parents’ detention suspect. “I think they were using the wellness check to get information about the parents,” he said.
Smyers, the former Health and Human Services official, said the public safety and border security justifications noted in the ICE memo about tracking down unaccompanied children are the same justifications used by Stephen Miller, the federal official and mastermind behind the separation of thousands of families at the southern border during President Trump’s first term.
“The American public should be just as galvanized against this as they were to family separation at the border,” she said.
Castillo reported from Washington and Gomez from Los Angeles.
Politics
Nearly 20 states sue HHS over declaration to restrict gender transition treatment for minors
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A group of 19 Democrat-led states and Washington, D.C., filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over a declaration that aims to restrict gender transition treatment for minors.
The lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; its secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.; and its inspector general comes after the declaration issued last week described treatments such as puberty blockers, hormone therapy and gender surgeries as unsafe and ineffective for children experiencing gender dysphoria.
The declaration also warned doctors they could be excluded from federal health programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, if they provide these treatments to minors.
The move seeks to build on President Donald Trump’s executive order in January calling on HHS to protect children from “chemical and surgical mutilation.”
HHS UNLEASHES SWEEPING CRACKDOWN ON CHILD ‘SEX-REJECTING PROCEDURES,’ THREATENS HOSPITAL, MEDICAID FUNDING
The lawsuit was filed against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; its secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.; and its inspector general. (Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters)
“We are taking six decisive actions guided by gold standard science and the week one executive order from President Trump to protect children from chemical and surgical mutilation,” Kennedy said during a press conference last week.
HHS has also proposed new rules designed to further block gender transition treatment for minors, although the lawsuit does not address the rules, which have yet to be finalized.
The states’ lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Eugene, Oregon, argues that the declaration is inaccurate and unlawful and urges the court to prevent it from being enforced.
“Secretary Kennedy cannot unilaterally change medical standards by posting a document online, and no one should lose access to medically necessary health care because their federal government tried to interfere in decisions that belong in doctors’ offices,” New York Attorney General Letitia James, who led the lawsuit, said in a statement.
The lawsuit claims the declaration attempts to pressure providers into ending gender transition treatment for young people and circumvent legal requirements for policy changes. The complaint said federal law requires the public be given notice and an opportunity to comment before substantively amending health policy and that neither of these were done before the declaration was released.
HHS’ move seeks to build on President Donald Trump’s executive order in January calling on HHS to protect children from “chemical and surgical mutilation.” (Tom Brenner for The Washington Post via Getty Images)
The declaration based its conclusions on a peer-reviewed report that the department conducted earlier this year that called for more reliance on behavioral therapy rather than broad gender transition treatment for minors with gender dysphoria.
The report raised questions about standards for the treatment of transgender children issued by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health and brought concerns that youths may be too young to give consent to life-changing treatments that could result in future infertility.
Major medical groups and physicians who treat transgender children have criticized the report as inaccurate.
HHS also announced last week two proposed federal rules — one to cut off federal Medicaid and Medicare funding from hospitals that offer gender transition treatment to children and another to block federal Medicaid money from being used for these procedures.
HOUSE APPROVES MTG-SPONSORED BILL TO CRIMINALIZE GENDER TRANSITION TREATMENT FOR MINORS
New York Attorney General Letitia James led the lawsuit against the Trump administration. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
The proposals have not yet been made final and are not legally binding because they must go through a lengthy rulemaking process and public comment before they can be enforced.
Several major medical providers have already pulled back on gender transition treatment for youths since Trump returned to office, even those in Democrat-led states where the procedures are legal under state law.
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Medicaid programs in just under half of states currently cover gender transition treatment. At least 27 states have adopted laws restricting or banning the treatment, and the Supreme Court’s decision this year upholding Tennessee’s ban likely means other state laws will remain in place.
Democrat attorneys general from California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Wisconsin, Washington state and Washington, D.C., as well as Pennsylvania’s Democrat governor, joined James in the lawsuit.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON — Tips provided to federal investigators about Donald Trump’s alleged involvement in Jeffrey Epstein’s schemes with young women and girls are “sensationalist” and “untrue,” the Justice Department said on Tuesday, after a new tranche of files released from the probe featured multiple references to the president.
The documents include a limousine driver reportedly overhearing Trump discussing a man named Jeffrey “abusing” a girl, and an alleged victim accusing Trump and Epstein of rape. It is unclear whether the FBI followed up on the tips. The alleged rape victim died from a gunshot wound to the head after reporting the incident.
Nowhere in the newly released files do federal law enforcement agents or prosecutors indicate that Trump was suspected of wrongdoing, or that Trump — whose friendship with Epstein lasted through the mid-2000s — was investigated himself.
But one unidentified federal prosecutor noted in a 2020 email that Trump had flown on Epstein’s private jet “many more times than previously has been reported,” including over a time period when Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s top confidante who would ultimately be convicted on five federal counts of sex trafficking and abuse, was being investigated for criminal activity.
The Justice Department released an unusual statement unequivocally defending the president.
“Some of these documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims made against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election,” the Justice Department statement read. “To be clear: the claims are unfounded and false, and if they had a shred of credibility, they certainly would have been weaponized against President Trump already.”
“Nevertheless, out of our commitment to the law and transparency, the DOJ is releasing these documents with the legally required protections for Epstein’s victims,” the department added.
The Justice Department files were released with heavy redactions after bipartisan lawmakers in Congress passed a new law compelling it to do so, despite Trump lobbying Republicans aggressively over the summer and fall to oppose the bill. The president ultimately signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act into law after the legislation passed with veto-proof majorities in both chambers.
One newly released file containing a letter purportedly from Epstein — a notorious child sex offender who died in jail while awaiting federal trial on sex-trafficking charges — drew widespread attention online, but was held up by the Justice Department as an example of faulty or misleading information contained in the files.
The letter appeared to be sent by Epstein to Larry Nassar, another convicted sex offender, shortly before Epstein’s death. The letter’s author suggested that Nassar would learn after receiving the note that Epstein had “taken the ‘short route’ home,” possibly referring to his suicide. It was postmarked from Virginia on Aug. 13, 2019, despite Epstein’s death in a Manhattan jail three days prior.
“Our president shares our love of young, nubile girls,” the letter reads. “When a young beauty walked by he loved to ‘grab snatch,’ whereas we ended up snatching grub in the mess halls of the system. Life is unfair.”
The Justice Department said that the FBI had confirmed that the letter is “FAKE” after it made the rounds on Tuesday.
“This fake letter serves as a reminder that just because a document is released by the Department of Justice does not make the allegations or claims within the document factual,” the department posted on social media. “Nevertheless, the DOJ will continue to release all material required by law.”
The department has faced bipartisan scrutiny since failing to release all of the Epstein files in its possession by Dec. 19, the legal deadline for it to do so, and for redacting material on the vast majority of the documents.
Justice Department officials said they were following the law by protecting victims with the redactions. The Epstein Files Transparency Act also directs the department not to redact images or references to prominent or political figures, and to provide an explanation for each and every redaction in writing.
The latest release, just days before the Christmas holiday, includes roughly 30,000 documents, the department said. Hundreds of thousands more are expected to be released in the coming weeks.
Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released a statement in response to the Tuesday release accusing the Justice Department of a “cover-up,” writing on social media, “the new DOJ documents raise serious questions about the relationship between Epstein and Donald Trump.”
Documents from Epstein’s private estate released by the oversight committee earlier this fall had already cast a spotlight on that relationship, revealing Epstein had written in emails to associates that Trump “knew about the girls.”
The latest documents release also includes an email from an individual identified as “A,” claiming to stay at Balmoral Castle, a royal residence in Scotland, asking Maxwell if she had found him “some new inappropriate friends.” Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly known as Prince Andrew, has come under intense scrutiny over his ties to Epstein in recent years.
Speaking at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Monday, Trump said the continuing Epstein scandal amounts to a “distraction” from Republican successes, and expressed disapproval over the release of images in the files that reveal associates of Epstein.
“I believe they gave over 100,000 pages of documents, and there’s tremendous backlash,” Trump told reporters. “It’s an interesting question, because a lot of people are very angry that pictures are being released of other people that really had nothing to do with Epstein. But they’re in a picture with him because he was at a party, and you ruin a reputation of somebody. So a lot of people are very angry that this continues.”
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White nationalist Nick Fuentes vowed to campaign against Vivek Ramaswamy in a slur-laced rant denouncing the Republican’s Ohio governor bid.
The declaration came just days after Ramaswamy called out Fuentes during a speech at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest conference in which he criticized Fuentes over some of his inflammatory remarks.
“I think I’m going to go to Ohio and the word that we are looking for is denial. We have to deny Vivek Ramaswamy the governorship. This is the only race I care about in ‘26. It’s the only one I care about,” Fuentes said during a Tuesday livestream. He also used a slur to describe Ramaswamy and said he does not care if a Democrat defeats him in the governor’s race.
When asked by Fox News Digital for a response, a spokesperson for Ramaswamy’s campaign said on Wednesday, “We’re focused on the issues that matter most to Ohioans, not fringe voices that prefer a far-left Democrat to the Trump-endorsed conservative.”
VIVEK RAMASWAMY TURNS TO CONSERVATIVE YOUTH TO SHAPE THE MOVEMENT’S NEXT PHASE, ANALYZES 2026 RACES
Vivek Ramaswamy speaks during Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest conference on Friday, Dec. 19, 2025. At right is White nationalist Nick Fuentes outside a Turning Point event on June 15, 2024, in Detroit. (Cheney Orr/Reuters; Dominic Gwinn/Getty Images)
Ramaswamy laid out his vision for what it means to be an American during remarks Friday at AmericaFest.
“What does it mean to be an American in the year 2026? It means we believe in those ideals of 1776,” he said at the Turning Point USA event. “It means we believe in merit, that the best person gets the job regardless of their skin color.”
“It means we believe in free speech and open debate,” he added. “Even for those who disagree with us, from Nick Fuentes to Jimmy Kimmel, you get to speak your mind in the open without the government censoring you.”
RAMASWAMY REVEALS MAIN LESSON LEARNED BY REPUBLICANS AFTER DEMOCRATS’ BIG WINS ON ELECTION DAY
Vivek Ramaswamy speaks during Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest 2025, on Friday, Dec. 19, 2025, in Phoenix. (Jon Cherry/AP)
Ramaswamy then said, “If you believe in normalizing hatred toward any ethnic group, toward Whites, toward Blacks, toward Hispanics, toward Jews, toward Indians, you have no place in the future of the conservative movement, period.”
“And I will not apologize for that. I will not hedge when I say it,” Ramaswamy continued. “If you believe, and you will forgive me for giving you an exact quote from our online commentator, Nick Fuentes. If you believe that Hitler was pretty f—— cool, you have no place in the future of the conservative movement. You can debate foreign aid, Israel all you want. That’s fine. That’s fair. But you have no place with that level of hatred.”
Ramaswamy declared his candidacy for the Ohio governorship in late February.
Ramaswamy is running to replace Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, shown here in the Old Senate Chamber in the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 21, 2025. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
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Current Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, who is also a Republican, is term-limited and will be departing office in January 2027.
Fox News Digital’s David Rutz contributed to this report.
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