The bill provides funding that the Administration could attempt to use to summarily return any unaccompanied child despite trafficking and other protection concerns.
Key Provisions Impacting Unaccompanied Children:
OBBB imposes novel and unreasonable fees that will hinder and often outright bar unaccompanied children’s access to humanitarian protection in the United States. These fees make children more vulnerable to traffickers and other bad actors who will exploit these fees to prey on impacted children.
These fees include, for example:
- A new, minimum $5,000 fee for arriving at the U.S. southern border between ports of entry in pursuit of safety, which for many unaccompanied children may constitute their sole viable avenue for seeking
legal protection; - A new, minimum $250 fee for applying for Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, a form of humanitarian protection for abused, abandoned, and neglected youth;
- A new, minimum $100 fee for applying for asylum;
- A new, minimum fee of $100 per year while awaiting asylum adjudication amid years-long backlogs;
- A new, minimum $550 fee for asylum applicants to apply for an employment authorization document, which for many tender-age and teenage children alike serves as an essential form of identification
in the United States, as well as an additional $275 fee for each employment authorization document renewal; - A new, minimum $5,000 fee for certain individuals who are ordered removed from the United States “in absentia”—that is, during hearings at which those individuals did not appear. Unfortunately, many if
not most, unaccompanied children lack attorneys, and it is often virtually impossible for unrepresented children to understand court hearing notices and arrange the logistics necessary to appear for hearings at the proper location and time.
Any of these fees could prove prohibitive for many unaccompanied children in need of protection. The overwhelming majority of children will be unable to afford the $5,000 border arrival fee alone. It is patently unreasonable to require a 12-year-old at the border, much less a two-year-old, to somehow transact $5,000 in payment to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) merely for the opportunity to seek safety.