DHS began offering unaccompanied immigrant children cash and detention threats to induce 'self-deportation'

On October 3, 2025, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Health and Human Services began implementing a nationwide program pressuring unaccompanied immigrant children in federal custody to "self-deport," offering children 14 and older a one-time $2,500 stipend in exchange for agreeing to voluntary departure and giving up their right to a hearing before an immigration judge. A memo HHS sent that Friday to legal service providers around the country said DHS would pay the stipend to eligible children — excluding minors from Mexico — who elected voluntary departure, and government officials confirmed children had already been identified for the program. Court records later showed, and the government did not dispute, that DHS had used a written "UAC Pathway Processing Advisal" script since September 2025, before the payment program became public, telling newly detained children that refusing to self-deport meant they would be held in detention "for a prolonged period of time," transferred to ICE upon turning 18, barred from later applying for a visa, and that their U.S. sponsor could face arrest and criminal prosecution.

Unaccompanied children in DHS custody are required under a 1997 legal settlement to be transferred within days to the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Refugee Resettlement, where federal law guarantees them a confidential legal consultation and access to an immigration judge before any waiver of their rights. DHS's advisal script and payment offer instead reached children during that initial custody window, before they were transferred to ORR and before they could consult a lawyer. Immigration attorneys said the ultimatum was presented either verbally or in writing and was designed to secure waivers before children understood they had a right to contest removal.

Advocacy organizations, including the National Immigration Law Center, Public Counsel, and Kids in Need of Defense, denounced the program as coercive and warned it circumvented protections Congress established in the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 for unaccompanied children, a population Congress specifically found vulnerable to trafficking and abuse. Twenty-three members of Congress, led by Rep. Delia Ramirez, opened an investigation and wrote to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem demanding the administration reverse the practice, arguing it conflicted with the statute's shelter, screening, and hearing requirements. DHS did not dispute that the program existed but said the option was "strictly voluntary" and gave children "a choice and allows them to make an informed decision about their future."

Updates

2026-04-06 — Federal judge found the advisal program violated a 1985 injunction [6, 7]

U.S. District Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald denied the Trump administration's motion to terminate the 1985 Perez-Funez v. DHS injunction and separately ordered DHS to stop using the "blatantly coercive" self-deportation advisal, ruling that its threats of prolonged detention, ICE transfer at 18, and sponsor prosecution violated the 40-year-old order protecting unaccompanied children from being pressured into waiving their rights. Fitzgerald wrote that the threat "disturbingly mirrors" the coercion Jose Antonio Perez-Funez testified to in the 1985 case that established the original protections, and the court modified rather than lifted the injunction, keeping the due-process safeguards in place.