The Trump Administration’s Depraved Exploitation of Immigrant Children

The Department of Homeland Security is using underage-sex-trafficking conspiracy theories to bolster its mass deportation machine.

On June 11, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin seemed close to tears as he described what the Trump administration has deemed the mass trafficking and abuse of children. Under the Biden administration, Mullin asserted that “absolute horrific things” occurred. “Some of these kids claim that they were raped six to seven hundred times,” he said. “We’re going to rescue as many kids as we can possibly find.... As a father of six with three young girls, I will do whatever I have to do.”

Mullin was not referring to the victims of Jeffrey Epstein, but rather to a widespread conspiracy-driven theory about hundreds of thousands of “unaccompanied alien children,” or UACs, who entered the United States during the Biden administration and are falsely described by the Trump administration as missing and potentially trafficked.

Now under intensified pressure to increase deportations and with a seemingly unlimited budget, DHS is using its $150 billion windfall to incentivize local law enforcement to assist in confirming the locations of UACs across the country via the 287(g) program, which deputizes police, sheriffs, and some constables to act as immigration agents. According to documents from DHS, these financial incentives can add up to tens of thousands of dollars for each UAC found and verified.

Immigrant children are facing multiple attacks by the Trump administration, including decimation of legal services and ramped-up detention. Added to that mix, local police are getting in on the action under the guise of protecting children and fighting human trafficking. As part of the overall web of silent mass deportations, the supposed search for UACs blends QAnon-style conspiracy theories with an overfunded and supercharged deportation machine that has been targeting immigrant children and families without regard to the human rights consequences.

“Sending armed agents to the homes of immigrant children is not a safety check. It is a serious threat of enforcement,” Mary Miller Flowers, the director of legislative affairs at the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights, explained. The results are likely to be nothing short of disastrous for everyone involved.

When young people enter the country seeking asylum without their parents, they are generally released to a sponsor, often a family member already living in America. Unlike adults, children are processed by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, or ORR, which is under the auspices of Department of Health and Human Services, not DHS. According to a 1997 consent decree and the 2008 Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, child immigrants are entitled to certain rights and protections, including safe and sanitary conditions as well as prompt release from detention. Unlike DHS, a law enforcement agency, ORR was intentionally kept separate. Jen Smyers, the deputy director of ORR during the Biden administration, explained that ORR was intended to be about child welfare—not........

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