Advocates say unaccompanied minors are being detained longer and used as bait to arrest those who care for them

A 10-year-old girl showed up for a routine check-in about her immigration case – and agents cuffed and detained her mother on the spot. A 14-year-old boy was shaken out of bed at 6am when plainclothes officers showed up, unannounced, at his door for what the agents claimed was a “wellness check”. A 17-year-old girl has been detained for months with her newborn baby due to new restrictions on who can sponsor unaccompanied minor immigrants.

In the past few months, the administration has enacted a series of punitive policies to expedite the removal of unaccompanied minors and strip them of legal representation. It has attempted to tear down the basic rights and protections for children under the government’s care, while simultaneously issuing new restrictions on who can take custody of them – leaving children to languish in detention. In several troubling cases across the US, advocates say the children are being used as “bait” to arrest and deport the adults around them.

Taken together, advocates and lawyers say the changes represent a terrifying new strategy in the government’s crackdown on immigrants, designed to instill fear and chaos in families.