When it comes to migrant children under U.S. custody, the Trump administration is giving eligible sponsors—oftentimes relatives who are themselves undocumented—an impossible choice: step forward and then possibly be deported for it, or continue to let the child languish in a prison camp.
It’s a choice Jorge was recently forced to make. He told The New Yorker that in early August he received a phone call from a Spanish-speaking official who told him that his 17-year-old nephew, Pedro, had been apprehended at the U.S./Mexico border. The teen, threatened by gang members, fled Guatemala by himself.
“I was going to do something to get Pedro out of detention,” Jorge said. “It was just a question of how to do it.” That’s because Jorge, along with his parents, are undocumented, and the Trump administration has, in unprecedented form, joined with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to increase sponsor vetting. They claim it’s for the safety of kids, but it’s not—ask the number of immigrants who were recently arrested after stepping forward to sponsor kids.
“They’ve flipped their mandate from the children’s welfare to immigration enforcement,” said Jennifer Podkul of Kids in Need of Defense, a vital organization that provides legal representation and other assistance to detained children. “What that’s done is kept kids in detention longer, and led to sponsors backing out.”
Because the government requires a secondary sponsor as well, Jorge’s parents, Ana and Victor, agreed to become Pedro’s sponsors, handing over fingerprints and going to a mandatory information session. “I couldn’t sleep the night before,” Ana said. But then the family found out that Pedro had been among the hundreds of kids transferred to Trump’s prison camp in Texas, following overcrowding in Health and Human Services (HHS) facilities.
“That was a whole other anxiety,” Jorge said. “I always watch the news, and I was seeing that things were pretty bad there.” The family still hasn’t heard anything about their paperwork or how close they are to getting Pedro out. Another fear is that Pedro will soon turn 18, and ICE has arrested minors and shuffled them to adult detention centers for deportation on their 18th birthday.
Jorge and Pedro’s heart-wrenching story is here in its entirety, and is just one small glimpse into the cruelty that has been inflicted onto these families. “It all comes down to a decision we’ve made,” Jorge said. “Either the government sends Pedro here or it sends Pedro back. We want him here. There’s hope that we’ll be able to do that for him. There’s also hopelessness—and that’s about what might happen to us. Maybe we’ll all be sent back together.”