This article is published in collaboration with Texas Tribune, a non-profit, nonpartisan local newsroom that informs and engages Texans. Sign up for Bried Weekly and stay on track to essential coverage of Texas issues.
It started with a phone call. The man who identified himself as a federal immigration agent contacted his father in Venezuela, San Antonio, and questioned him about his teenage son. The agent said authorities are planning to visit the family’s apartment to assess the boy’s living conditions.
Later that day, federal agents descended onto his complex and covered the peephole in the door with black tape, recalled his father. According to the family, agents repeatedly yelled their father and son’s names, shouted their father and son’s names, and opened the door and waited for hours. Her father, 37-year-old father, texting an immigration lawyer, warned that the visit could be an excuse for deportation. The agent returned the next two days, causing his father to be wary, like skipping work at the mechanic shop. His son was home from school.
In recent months, agents from the Department of Homeland Security have visited dozens of such visits as part of a systematic search of children who have arrived at the US-Mexico border and sponsors who care about them while pursuing immigration cases. The Refugee Resettlement Office, responsible for child care and sponsor screening, is assisting with checks.
As President Donald Trump seeks to increase deportations in his second term, the agency’s welfare mission appears to be undergoing a severe transformation. They say one of the clearest indications of that shift is the scale of checks that immigration agents are making, using information provided to target sponsors and children for deportation.
Trump officials argue that the administration ensures that children are not abused or trafficked. However, current and former institutional employees, immigration lawyers and child advocates say resettlement agencies are floating away from humanitarian duties. Last week, the Trump administration fired the agency ombudsman, who was hired to act as the first watchdog in President Joe Biden’s administration.
“By giving them to agencies that are not part of immigration enforcement, Congress established a system to protect immigrant children,” said Scott Schüchert, a former employee of Homeland Security and U.S. immigration and customs enforcement under Trump’s first term and later Biden. The Trump administration said it was “trying to use that protection arrangement as a blad lol to hurt children and adults who are willing to move forward to caring for them.”
Republicans have called ORRs in the past, pointing to examples of loose institutional surveillance, with children working in dangerous jobs. Lawyers, advocates and agency officials say cases of abuse are rare and should be rooted. They argue that recent changes in the administration are immigration enforcement tools that can make children and their sponsors susceptible to harmful living and working conditions, as they fear deportation.
Project 2025, a right-wing blueprint for rebuilding the federal government, has been asked to move resettlement agencies under the Department of Homeland Security, including ICE, claiming that by keeping agencies separate, more minors like companions have entered the country illegally. Trump publicly distanced himself from the overall plan during his reelection campaign, but much of his actions are consistent with the proposal.
During Trump’s first term he requested the ORR to share information about his sponsorship with his child, which is usually a relative. The result has spurred pushbacks from at least 170 sponsors across the country who have been illegally arrested and said they should not be used to support lawmakers and deportation. Shortly after the start of its second term in January, Trump issued an executive order calling for more information sharing between the resettlement agency and the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees homeland security. Currently, current and former employees of the Resettlement Agency say some immigration enforcement officials are given free access to a database containing sensitive and detailed case information.
“Data sharing for the sole purpose of immigration enforcement puts the privacy and security of children and their sponsor, Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat,” he wrote in a letter to the Trump administration in February. In a March response to Wyden, Andrew Gradison, representative vice-secretary of HHS, said the resettlement agency is sharing information with other federal agencies to ensure that immigrant children are safe. Wyden told the news organization he plans to continue asking for answers. On Tuesday, he wrote to the administration in another letter saying the ORR shared personal information “beyond what is permitted,” and “is increasingly concerned” he “puts already vulnerable children at further risk.”
Two advocacy groups filed a federal lawsuit in Washington last week, claiming that the Trump administration illegally overturned key provisions in the 2024 Biden rules. These provisions prohibited ORRs from using immigrant status to sponsor their ability to care for children. They also previously banned agents from sharing sponsor information for immigration enforcement purposes. Reversing the clause led to the child’s long-term detention, the lawsuit alleges, because sponsors fear or cannot claim it because they are unable to meet the requirements. The government has not responded to court cases.
Along with these changes, Trump tapped ICE officials to lead the ORR for the first time. The official was fired two months later because he couldn’t implement the administration’s change “quickly enough,” ICE veteran Angie Salazar, who succeeds the position, said in a March 6 recording obtained by ProPublica and The Tribune.
“Some of these policy changes took too long. Three weeks are too long,” Salazar told staff without providing details. Salazar said he would check immigrant children and step up efforts to increase sponsor screening.
She told staff in almost two weeks, ice investigators visited the residences of 1,500 unaccompanied minors. Agents have discovered several examples of what she said was a case of sex and human trafficking in workers. Salazar did not provide details, but said it was important to identify even one case of abuse.
“These are my marching orders,” Salazar told staff. “I never do anything outrageous, anyone, but we operate within the law, and I hope you all do and support it.”
Salazar said he returned to federal custody, which was rare in the past, in hopes of an increase in the number of children taken from sponsors.
A box filled with clothing and household items in a Venezuelan family’s San Antonio home. The family was ready to put much of their belongings in boxes and ship out of the fear of deportation. Credit: Chris Lee from Propublica and Texas Tribune
Since Salazar was in charge, the ORR has established a raft of strict screening rules for sponsors of immigrant children, asserted by the agency to ensure that sponsors are properly screened. This includes not accepting foreign passports or IDs as a form of identification unless people have legal permission to be in the United States. The resettlement agency has increased its income requirements, including expanding its relative DNA checks and filing recent pay stubs or tax returns with sponsors. (The IRS recently announced that it will share tax information with ICE to promote deportation.)
In a statement, Orr said he was unable to respond to ongoing lawsuits and did not answer Salazar’s comments or detailed questions about some reasons for the new requirements. The policy aims to ensure the safe placement of unaccompanied minors, and the agency is “not a law enforcement or immigration enforcement,” the statement read.
HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon also declined to comment on the pending lawsuit. However, he criticised how agencies within his division operate under Biden, saying he was unable to protect unaccompanied children after being released saying they were “turning a blind eye to serious risks.” Former ORR Deputy Director Jen Smyers disputed these claims, saying the Biden administration has made progress in addressing long-standing concerns, including creating units to combat sponsor fraud and improving data systems to better track children.
Tricia McLaughlin, secretary to DHS Secretary, did not answer any detailed questions, but in a statement said she shares her goal of ensuring that unaccompanied minors are safe. She did not answer questions about her Venezuelan family in San Antonio. She also refused to provide the number of homes her agents visited across the country.
An April email obtained by Propublica and The Tribune shows the first magnitude of an operation in the Houston area alone, which has resettled the nation’s most non-accompanied immigrant children in the past decade. In an email, ICE officials notified the Harris County Sheriff’s Office that they plan to visit more than 3,600 addresses related to such minors. The sheriff’s office did not support the check, the spokesman said.
Trump is spending billions on border security. Some of the residents living there do not have basic resources.
An internal ICE memo, obtained last month through a Freedom of Information Act request by Washington-based advocacy group, the National Mivirigant Project, directed agents to find unaccompanied children and their sponsors. The document sets a set of factors that federal agents should prioritize when looking for children, including those who are not attending court hearings, those who have gang bonds or who have imposed deportation orders. The memo is a detailed crime, such as smuggling, where sponsors may be charged.
In the case of the San Antonio family, the father has a temporary protected status. This is a US permit for certain people facing dangers at home, allowing him to legally live and work here. The press could not find a criminal history for him in the United States. His father said in his application for US asylum that he left Venezuela after receiving death threats for protesting President Nicolas Maduro’s government. The father, who refused to be identified because he was afraid of ice enforcement, said in an interview that his son later escaped for the same reason.
Meanwhile, the paths for families like Venezuelan men and sons have been reduced to raise concerns about the ORR’s conduct. The Trump administration cut down staff in the agency’s Ombudsman office. Mary Giobagnoli, who headed the office, was fired last week. An official with HHS said the agency had not commented on HR issues, but in a letter to Joe Banori, the agency said her employment “does not promote the public interest.” Giovagnoli said CUTS will reduce the office’s ability to act as watchdogs to ensure that resettlement agencies meet established missions in Congress.
“There’s no effective monitoring,” she said. “There’s this invasion about Orr’s independence. I think everyone is afraid of a time when one institution will stop and where the next institution will begin.”
Doris Burke contributed to his research.
