Congress Must Close the Loophole That Drives the Unaccompanied Alien Child Trafficking Crisis
ICE is Deporting. Why are Unaccompanied Alien Children Still Arriving?
For years experts have called for legislative reforms to eliminate a perverse and dangerous incentive that attracts unaccompanied alien children to our borders and facilitates cartel abuse and extortion of minors along the way.1
The problem: Under current law, any unaccompanied child (UAC) from a non-contiguous country (Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, etc.) must be turned over to HHS’s Office for Refugee Resettlement (ORR) for placement with a “sponsor.” Children from Mexico and Canada can be returned home the same day.
That single distinction is the primary reason thousands of children from non-contiguous countries are put into the hands of cartel smugglers each year. Children will continue to be at risk until the loophole is closed.
Failing to amend the loophole in the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA) would lead to the absurd, unintended yet foreseeable result that UACs will continue to be brought to the U.S. by Mexican smuggling cartels while the Trump administration is simultaneously deporting the families these minors are presumably coming to the U.S. to join !!
Todd Bensman explains that the TVPRA’s differential treatment requires “that DHS stay deportations for child border crossers from non-contiguous countries and get them into the asylum system with access to lawyers and, while waiting for that, reunite them with family already in the United States at government expense.”
DHS Referrals to ORR, 2012-20242
According to Bensman, broader discovery of this loophole sparked the calamitous flow of UACs to our southern border: “The TVPRA legally enshrined catch-and-release for unaccompanied minors.”3
Why Amending the TVPRA is Necessary: Although ORR has not released quarterly reports for FY2025, raw data from ORR shows ~84,450 UACs were placed with sponsors in FY 2025. While we see a slow decline from the peak of 128,904 UACs placed in 2022, President Trump’s requested $4.4 billion for the Refugee and Entrant Assistance funding line suggests large numbers of UACs are anticipated to continue arriving.
Proof the Legislative Fix Works: Mexico is subject to the contiguous country rule. After full implementation, Mexican UAC encounters fell from ~16,000 (FY 2014) to 5,000-7,000 per year and have stayed relatively low.
The Solution: A legislative fix has already been drafted. TVPRA Sec. 235 can be revised with language from H.R. 2, Sec. 502 (118th Congress) via a manager’s amendment to the NDAA during reconciliation.4
The best way to protect children from the risks of cartel violence and extortion is to disincentivize the journey. Every unaccompanied alien child should be treated the same way we already treat Mexican and Canadian children — immediate repatriation after the existing trafficking/persecution screen.
It goes without saying that protecting children from cartel extortion and abuse should be a goal of both parties. In the bipartisan Homeland Security Advisory Council’s CBP Families and Children Care Panel Final Report (2019), in a section on Interim Emergency Recommendations, “appointees from both parties urged lawmakers to amend the TVPRA to require the same treatment of non-Mexican minors as for Mexican kids, which would then allow for the expedited removal and turn the tractor beam off.”5
In 2021 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee Joseph Edlow, now director of USCIS, underscored the necessity of legislative reforms to address the crisis. Edlow cited DHS reports showing that between 60-79 percent of UACs were placed with sponsors who were in the U.S illegally. Edlow recommended amending the TVPRA “to end the unequal treatment of UACs in section 235(a)(3) and (b) of TVPRA who are not from Canada or Mexico.”6
Andrew Arthur of CIS crunched the numbers in 2020 and noticed that “illegal entries did not quickly jump” when the TVPRA 2008 amendment passed, “but when migrants and smugglers figured out what they could now get away with, they skyrocketed.”7
In September 2025 Arthur revisited the TVPRA “nightmare” and how it created unintended but foreseeable consequences: “There are many flaws in section 235 of the TVPRA, but the biggest is its failure to hold any government agency responsible for UACs once they are placed with sponsors. Logically, that’s because Congress concluded their sponsors could be trusted to care for them, but 17 years of experience shows that’s not always true, and when it’s not the child can face dire consequences.”8
This document is available as one one-sheet, downloadable, printable pdf.
Unaccompanied Alien Children: An Overview (Washington DC: Congressional Research Service, September 5, 2024 (R43599) (“Some immigration observers contend that increased apprehensions of unaccompanied children in the past 15 years are primarily an unanticipated consequence of the enactment of the 2008 TVPRA which allowed all non-Mexican children to enter and remain in the United States for extended periods.” p.41.) https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/R/PDF/R43599/R43599.32.pdf
“Referrals.” HHS Administration of Children and Families, Office of Refugee Resettlement. https://acf.gov/orr/uac/referrals
Todd Bensman, Overrun: How Joe Biden Unleashed the Greatest Border Crisis in U.S. History (Post Hill Press, 2023), p. 57.
Secure the Border Act of 2023, H.R. 2, 118th Cong. (2023), https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/2
Cited in Bensman, p. 374. (“It is time for Congress to address this issue head on by amending the [TVPRA] to allow other than Mexican teenagers to be treated in the same way as Mexican teenagers” [Report p. 2, par. 3]). https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/fccp_final_report_1.pdf
Joseph B. Edlow, “Prepared Testimony of Joseph B. Edlow” (written testimony submitted to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Hearing on H.R. 6, American Dream and Promise Act of 2021, June 15, 2021), p. 7. https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Written%20Testimony%20JBE%206-15-21.pdf
Andrew Arthur, “Disturbing Trends at the Border.” Center for Immigration Studies, December 17, 2020. https://cis.org/Arthur/Disturbing-Trends-Border
Arthur, “The Guatemalan Minors Case and the ‘Unaccompanied Alien Children’ Nightmare.” Center for Immigration Studies, September 9, 2025. https://cis.org/Arthur/Guatemalan-Minors-Case-and-Unaccompanied-Alien-Children-Nightmare