When a father arrived at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in New Mexico last December, he believed he was one step closer to reuniting with his two teenaged children, who had been living in a federal shelter for nearly a year. Instead, agents detained him.
His case, documented by KFF Health News, is among several raising questions about the federal government’s use of children and family reunification procedures in immigration enforcement and detention.
Now, Orlando-based U.S. Congressman Maxwell Alejandro Frost wants to make such tactics illegal.
On Thursday, Nov. 12, the Democratic representative announced the No Kids as Bait Act, legislation aimed at preventing ICE and other federal immigration agents from using children to locate and detain their parents, relatives or potential sponsors.
“ICE has been using children as bait — essentially either detaining children or asking children questions to lure out the family and then detain those folks,” Frost told ELR News, according to The Floridian.
Frost said his proposed legislation would prohibit those tactics while giving affected individuals a means to pursue legal action against ICE and the federal government.
The announcement follows months of scrutiny and outrage surrounding the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, particularly its coordination between ICE and the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), the federal agency responsible for caring for unaccompanied migrant children.
In July, a Reuters investigation examining internal government data found that ORR had shared more than 460,000 investigative leads with ICE since January of last year. Those leads involved children, potential sponsors and household members, and resulted in more than 12,000 arrests, according to the report.
The information-sharing represented a departure from previous safeguards intended to separate child-welfare services from immigration enforcement.
The Trump administration has defended increased screening and information-sharing as necessary to protect migrant children from exploitation and placement with potentially dangerous sponsors. Immigration advocates, meanwhile, argue that the practices discourage families from seeking custody of their children.
The controversy has also extended beyond federal shelters.
In January, Minnesota school officials accused immigration agents of using 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos to draw relatives out of his home after detaining him and his father. Officials said agents instructed the child to knock on the front door to see whether anyone else was inside.
The Department of Homeland Security disputed that account, maintaining that agents had not targeted the child and were acting to ensure his safety after his father allegedly fled.
Frost has expressed hope that his proposal will find bipartisan support, arguing that the treatment of children during immigration enforcement should not be a partisan issue.
“It’s a despicable act to use children as a tool of detention against their own parents,” Frost told ELR News.
For now, the No Kids as Bait Act remains proposed legislation. Whether Congress will advance it remains to be seen.
