Federal Child-Welfare Office Shared 460,000 Leads With ICE, Records Show — 12,000 Arrested Since January 2025

Aurora’s six-year-old daughter spent more than half a year in a federal migrant-child shelter before the family could reunite. Days after their reunion, both mother and child were detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and sent to a family detention center in Texas — one outcome of a federal policy shift that has turned a child-welfare program into a source of immigration enforcement leads.

Since January 2025, the Office of Refugee Resettlement has shared more than 460,000 investigative leads with ICE, internal government data reviewed by Reuters show. Those leads concerned unaccompanied migrant children, their sponsors (usually parents or relatives), and other household members. More than 12,000 people have been arrested following those referrals.

The change represents a sharp reversal of a longstanding separation between child welfare and immigration enforcement. A 2008 federal law required ORR to place unaccompanied children in the least restrictive setting and release them to vetted sponsors as soon as safely possible — regardless of the sponsor’s immigration status. That meant families could reunite without fear of ICE targeting them, even when they were in the country illegally.

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Jen Smyers, who served as deputy director of ORR during the Biden administration, said safeguards against data sharing with ICE have been “completely reversed.” “They are weaponizing a child welfare program for the purposes of more deportations,” she said.

ORR said in a statement it “plays no role in the apprehension of children,” referring enforcement questions to the Department of Homeland Security. DHS said ORR provided leads as part of an effort to locate children placed with “unvetted sponsors,” including some with criminal records.

Aurora, a 24-year-old house cleaner who entered the U.S. illegally two years ago, left her daughter with family in rural Mexico, fearing the child was too young for the desert crossing. Last August, a relative brought the girl to the border, where she surrendered to immigration agents — a common reunification strategy among migrant families.

Over six months, Aurora provided ORR with extensive documentation, including a DNA test. She had no criminal record, documents show. The day before her daughter’s release, immigration agents visited Aurora at home, asked about the girl, and told her to report to an ICE office the following week.

At that appointment, Aurora said, agents “asked me if I had any problems in the U.S. and I said ‘no, because I haven’t done anything wrong. All I do is work.'” She and her daughter were detained and sent to the Dilley, Texas, family detention center. After three weeks, Aurora was released with an ankle monitor and ordered to report for regular check-ins pending her immigration case. DHS confirmed the detention, saying Aurora admitted to being “illegally smuggled across the border.”

While detained, Aurora’s Mississippi landlord evicted her and discarded her belongings. Mother and daughter moved to California, where a friend offered housing. At night, Aurora said, her daughter sometimes “gets up and cries, thinking she is still detained.”

Marleny, a Guatemalan mother who fled violence in 2023, provided ORR with tax records and fingerprints to secure her teenage son Victor’s release after four months in custody. She said she had no criminal record — “clean clean clean” — and felt no concern about sharing information. Two months after Victor’s release, ICE agents arrested Marleny and her partner at gunpoint as they headed to work.

DHS told Reuters ICE was executing a criminal search warrant on Marleny’s “roommate” — an apparent reference to her partner. The agency did not answer follow-up questions about the alleged crime or how agents located him. A neighbor alerted Victor, who was inside the apartment with his six-year-old brother. Victor is caring for his younger brother alone and facing a deportation order after missing a court hearing in the chaos following his mother’s arrest.

“We’ve seen so many sponsors arrested and collateral arrests with them,” said Alexa Sendukas, a managing attorney with the Galveston-Houston Immigrant Representation Project.

Under the current administration, sponsor screening includes additional steps: fingerprints from all household members, a narrower list of acceptable identification documents, and DNA testing to prove biological ties. The average time unaccompanied children spend in ORR custody has increased from 30 days in fiscal year 2024 to 194 days as of June 2026, according to ORR figures. ORR said the increased vetting is meant to shield children from harm.

The Breakdown

• ORR, a federal agency created in 1980 to resettle refugees and later charged with housing unaccompanied migrant children, has shared more than 460,000 leads with ICE since January 2025 — information on children, their sponsors, and household members.
• More than 12,000 people have been arrested following those referrals, internal government data reviewed by Reuters show.
• A 2008 law previously ensured families could reunite without fear of ICE targeting them, regardless of the sponsor’s immigration status — a protection the current administration has eliminated.
• Children now spend an average of 194 days in custody (as of June 2026), compared to 30 days in fiscal year 2024, due to expanded vetting requirements including fingerprints from all household members and DNA testing.

What This Means for You

The President’s policy of using a child-welfare program to generate immigration-enforcement leads puts families in an impossible position: step forward to claim a child and risk arrest, or leave the child in federal custody indefinitely. This is not a peripheral enforcement matter — it is a deliberate redirection of a program created to protect children, now functioning as a tool to locate and detain their relatives. If you are a Fresno voter weighing the current administration’s immigration approach, this is what that approach looks like in practice: a woman working as a house cleaner, with no criminal record, detained alongside her six-year-old daughter after following the government’s own reunification process. The question before you is whether that outcome reflects the values you expect federal policy to uphold.

What to Watch

The material includes no stated opposition or dissent from elected officials — every detail comes from the administration carrying out the policy, legal advocates observing it, and families caught in it. But the tension here is real and deserves naming directly: this is a program built on trust. Families provide fingerprints, tax records, DNA samples — the most intimate proof of identity and relationship — because they were told it would protect their children. The current administration has turned that trust into a tracking mechanism.

The question worth asking is not whether immigration law should be enforced — that is a separate debate. The question is whether it is right or wise to enforce it by using children as bait. A mother who submits to a months-long vetting process, passes every check, and still ends up detained with her daughter has not been caught evading the system — she has been caught trusting it. That is not the same thing as accountability. It is a betrayal of the promise the system made to get her to come forward in the first place.

There is also a practical angle: when word spreads that cooperating with ORR means risking arrest, fewer sponsors will step forward. Children will stay in federal custody longer — the data already shows this happening, with shelter stays more than six times longer than they were two years ago. The administration frames this as protecting children from unvetted sponsors. But the families described in this reporting had no criminal records and provided every document requested. The threat ORR claims to be guarding against is not the threat these families posed. The real outcome is children spending months in institutional care, followed by reunions that end in detention.

If this policy continues, watch for whether the shelter population grows, whether custody times lengthen further, and whether families stop coming forward at all. The administration has created a system where protecting a child and protecting the family claiming that child are now openly in conflict. One of those will give.