By Kristina Cooke
July 28 (Reuters) - Aurora's 6-year-old daughter arrived at the U.S. border alone and spent more than half a year in a child migrant shelter while her mother, who was already in the country, worked to get her out.
The two were finally reunited in late March.
“We were overjoyed,” said Aurora, 24, who like others in this story spoke on the condition they be identified only by their first names.
Days later, however, mother and daughter were detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement
and sent to a family detention center in Texas, records show.
They are among more than 12,000 people arrested by U.S. immigration authorities following tips from the Office of Refugee Resettlement during President Donald Trump’s second term, according to internal government data reviewed exclusively by Reuters.
ORR was created in 1980 to resettle refugees fleeing war and persecution. Since the early 2000s, the agency has also been charged with housing unaccompanied migrant children arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border, like Aurora's daughter.
The care of these children has historically been walled off from immigration enforcement. A 2008 law sought to ensure they were placed in the least restrictive setting and released from detention as soon as safely possible, regardless of their sponsors’ legal status.
That meant migrant families could be reunited without fear of being targeted by ICE, even if they were in the country illegally.
The Trump administration has taken a drastically different approach. Since January 2025, the data shows, ORR has shared more than 460,000 “leads” with ICE about unaccompanied children, their sponsors -- usually parents or other relatives -- and additional household members, leaving them vulnerable to detention and deportation.
While Reuters and others have reported on the growing cooperation between ORR and ICE, this story is the first to reveal the scale of the information shared for immigration enforcement.
Interviews with migrant families, legal advocates and current and former U.S. officials illustrate the far-reaching implications of this policy shift and its human toll.
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.
In a statement to Reuters, ORR said it "plays no role in the apprehension of children,” referring questions about immigration enforcement to the Department of Homeland Security, ICE’s parent agency.
In response to questions from Reuters, DHS said that during Trump's second term "ORR has provided ICE Homeland Security Investigations with potential investigative leads," as part of an effort to locate unaccompanied children who were placed with "unvetted sponsors,” including some with criminal records.
'ALL I DO IS WORK'
Aurora entered the United States illegally two years ago in search of work and safety.
She left her daughter with family in their rural Mexican village, fearing she was too young for the dangerous desert crossing.
Aurora found a job as a house cleaner in Mississippi. Last August, she said, a relative brought her daughter to the border and left her to surrender to immigration agents, a common strategy among families seeking reunification.
Officials transferred the girl to a migrant children’s shelter and Aurora began the vetting process to get her out.
Over the course of six months, she provided the agency with reams of documentation, including a DNA test. She had no criminal record, documents show.
Under Trump, the screening process for sponsors now includes a number of extra steps, including requiring fingerprints of all household members. As a consequence, the amount of time unaccompanied children spend in custody has increased from an average of 30 days in fiscal year 2024 to 194 days in June 2026, according to ORR figures.
ORR declined to comment on specific cases but said its increased vetting is meant to shield children from harm.
The day before being reunited with her daughter, Aurora said, immigration agents visited her at home, asked about the girl, and told her to report to an ICE office the following week.
At that appointment, Aurora recounted, 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 at the appointment, records show, and sent to a family detention center in Dilley, Texas.
They were there for three weeks. Upon their release, Aurora was fitted with an ankle monitor and instructed to report for regular check-ins pending the outcome of her immigration court case, records show. DHS confirmed details of Aurora's detention and release, saying she had admitted to being "illegally smuggled across the border."
While she was inside, her landlord in Mississippi evicted her and threw out her belongings. So mother and daughter headed to California, where a friend offered to put them up.
Aurora says she fears they will soon be deported.
At night sometimes, her daughter "gets up and cries, thinking she is still detained," her mother said.
SPONSORS SWEPT UP
Aurora and her daughter are at least together. Other families have been separated again.
Marleny and her youngest son fled violence in Guatemala in 2023. They crossed the U.S. border illegally and settled in Texas, where she cleaned construction sites.
Her older son, Victor, stayed with family back home. When his uncle was killed, he too decided to make the journey north and turned himself in to U.S. border agents.
After four months in ORR custody, Victor was released in late April, the night before his 18th birthday, records show. The family had a party to celebrate.
“I was so happy,” Marleny said. “I didn't know then what God had in store for me.”
To get Victor out, she provided ORR with extensive documentation for both her and her partner, she said, including tax records and fingerprints. Because they had no criminal record -- they were “clean clean clean,” she said -- she had no qualms about sharing the information.
Two months after Victor was released, though, ICE agents arrested Marleny and her partner at gunpoint as they were getting in their car to go to work.
In response to questions, DHS told Reuters that ICE was executing a criminal search warrant on Marleny’s “roommate” - an apparent reference to her partner. DHS did not answer follow-up questions about the nature of the alleged crime or how they had located him.
Seeing the guns was traumatic, Marleny said, reminding her of the violence she left behind in Guatemala.
A neighbor who witnessed the arrest alerted Victor, who was in the family’s apartment with his 6-year-old brother. In tears, he called a legal assistant at the Galveston-Houston Immigrant Representation Project.
“We’ve seen so many sponsors arrested and collateral arrests with them,” said Alexa Sendukas, a managing attorney with GHIRP.
Victor is now caring for his little brother alone. He was due in court after his mother was arrested, but said he forgot to show up in the chaos that followed.
Now facing a deportation order, he hopes to find a lawyer to reopen his immigration case.
“I need to keep moving forward," he said.
(Reporting by Kristina Cooke in San Francisco; Editing by Jesse Mesner-Hage and Deepa Babington)
