Trump administration takes hundreds of migrant children out of their homes, into government custody

The Trump administration is taking hundreds of migrant children out of their homes and into government custody, at times separating them from their families.

The Trump administration is taking hundreds of migrant children already residing in the United States out of their homes and into government custody, at times separating them from their families and making it more difficult for them to be released, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter. President Donald Trump and his top aides have repeatedly cited the influx of children who arrived at the US southern border under the Biden administration without a parent or guardian as a critique of his predecessor and his handling of border security. Trump officials argue that hundreds of thousands of those children went unaccounted for — and are in potentially dangerous situations. While former Biden officials contend that the surge of kids in 2021 placed tremendous pressure on the federal system, they and several experts in the field refute claims that there are large numbers of children missing from the system. Still, the notion that there are thousands of such children has served as the impetus for a major campaign by the Trump administration to set up a makeshift “war room” to pore over sensitive data and deploy federal authorities to children’s homes nationwide. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has taken around 500 children into government custody following so-called welfare checks since Trump returned to the White House, according to three sources familiar with the matter, either because their situations were deemed unsafe or because of immigration enforcement actions against sponsors, the majority of whom are the kids’ parents or other family members. That number is more than previously known and an unprecedented departure from previous years when such occurrences were rare. The FBI has been involved in some of the welfare checks, frustrating some at the bureau who expressed concerns that the effort is more targeted at finding children’s relatives who law enforcement otherwise has no pretext to investigate or arrest, according to a law enforcement official.