deportations have – An 18-year-old Alabama high school student with Special Immigrant Juvenile Status sits in a Louisiana detention center awaiting deportation as federal data show unaccompanied minors are being detained and removed at roughly triple the rate seen in the last yea
For the first few weeks after he arrived at a detention center in Winnfield, Louisiana, Elder Chavez barely slept. When the bunk beds creaked around him and the other men in his block kept shifting through the night. he would stay wide awake—grinding through headaches that never quite let up. He’d finally doze off around 4 a.m., just as guards began summoning detainees for breakfast.
He’d learned the pattern the way you learn weather. The dark circles under his eyes made him feel, he said, like an “owl.” By morning, someone was always calling. By afternoon, he was already too tired to live normally.
Chavez didn’t land in detention because of a violent crime. He was picked up in December by Alabama state police for driving 15 mph over the speed limit and for driving without a license. He had been on his way home from getting his favorite sandwich. carne asada. when officers realized he was an immigrant and called U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
He offered documents showing he wasn’t living in hiding. Immigration authorities had granted him Special Immigrant Juvenile Status because. as a toddler. he had been abandoned by his parents in Honduras and came to the United States alone when he was 14. His sister. Mayuri Chavez. had migrated years earlier and was living in Alabama. and a lawyer was helping him pursue permanent residency.
“I’m legal in this country,” Chavez pleaded with the officers. He said one of them responded, “Your papers are of no use to me.”
Within moments, the story changed—from an otherwise law-abiding high school student with welding and carpentry classes, braces, a girlfriend, and weekend soccer games with his nieces and nephews—to a teenager thrown into detention and put on a path toward deportation.
“I’m just waiting here,” Chavez said during a video call from detention. “I really don’t know what’s going to happen to me.”
Chavez is hardly alone in what the data show is an accelerating crackdown on minors who arrive without parents or legal guardians. A first-of-its-kind analysis of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement data found unaccompanied minors are being detained and removed at about three times the rate they were during the final years of the first Trump presidency.
A separate analysis of court data found immigration judges—who report to the Justice Department—are issuing more than 10,000 removal and voluntary departure orders each month for immigrant minors, nearly four times the rate during Trump’s last term.
The majority of unaccompanied minors removed last year had no criminal history in the United States, the ICE analysis found.
Chavez’s case illustrates how the administration’s approach has shifted from years of legal protections built around the idea that children are uniquely vulnerable in a legal system designed for adults. Congress created SIJ to protect immigrants under 21 who can prove in family court that they were abused. neglected. or abandoned by at least one parent in their home countries.
But as part of the mass deportation campaign. the Trump administration has moved to roll back policies that had given immigrant minors access to legal counsel and relief from deportation while they pursued permission to permanently stay in the country. Those policies were based on laws implemented over more than two decades with bipartisan support.
Trump administration officials have argued that the programs designed to help unaccompanied minors are rife with fraud and that they have encouraged hundreds of thousands of children to attempt the dangerous journey to the border. To support that point. officials have cited the record 450. 000 unaccompanied minors who arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border and were released into the country under President Joe Biden.
Administration officials say that neither those children nor the people they were released to were properly vetted. and that some became victims of abuse or exploitation. They point to alarming numbers found working illegally in factories or in other jobs that put them at risk for trafficking. injury and wage theft. The administration also says some minors became criminals.
To make that case. the administration pointed to a July 2025 government report that said that since 2013. 19. 000 SIJ petitioners were found to have criminal arrest records. including hundreds with serious charges like murder and sex offenses. In the administration’s view, the remedy is to disincentivize immigrant children from coming in the first place.
Not everyone agrees that the answer is to remove children more aggressively. Advocates argue the administration is focusing on exceptional cases to paint all immigrant minors and the adults who sponsored them as a threat. They say minors like Chavez—who has turned 18—face serious risks if sent back to their home countries.
Michael Lukens. the executive director of the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights. said in response to the administration’s actions that “These children have been through incredibly harrowing and traumatic experiences. ” and that “ICE is retraumatizing them.” Lukens added: “If you’re worried about the welfare of kids. stop rounding kids up and trying to deport them.”.
The White House spokesperson, Abigail Jackson, said Trump is “undoing the damage Biden did.” A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said DHS “could not verify the veracity” of ProPublica’s data analysis.
In immigration courtrooms, the acceleration can feel immediate—and for some families, it arrives like surprise when they expect delay. In April. within the span of three hours on a single morning in a downtown New York immigration courtroom. Judge Jem Sponzo issued deportation orders for 25 minors. Almost everyone on her docket appeared virtually.
Some hearings lasted only a few minutes. Some of the minors were too young to understand what was happening.
That morning included an 8-year old girl from Ecuador seeking asylum and SIJ. Her mother had already won asylum in a separate case, but Sponzo ordered the girl deported anyway.
In another case, an attorney asked for more time to gather evidence for asylum for a client from Guatemala. The attorney said the girl’s home was dominated by an abusive father whose violence made it hard to compile information. Sponzo politely denied the request, saying, “I empathize and thank you for your efforts.” Then she ordered the child deported.
A high school senior from Guatemala living in Queens appeared on a video screen from a room with piled-up clothes on the bed and an American flag tacked on the wall. He stayed on mute while his lawyer asked for more time for his applications for SIJ and asylum to be processed. Sponzo said no, ordering him deported. His lawyer said afterward. in an interview. that the client is now afraid he could be picked up by ICE at any time.
At the end of the day, multiple attorneys said they felt blindsided by the rapid-fire denials. While they said they would appeal the judge’s rulings—measures that could potentially buy clients some time—one attorney described the deportation orders as hanging over clients’ heads “like a loaded gun.”
Judges have also been removed from their roles as the court system has moved to match the administration’s policy direction. Olivia Cassin. a former immigration judge who oversaw juvenile dockets in New York. said that before Trump returned to office. there was widespread recognition that it took time for minors’ SIJ and asylum petitions to work their way through the backlogged system. For SIJ recipients, getting a green card could take years, and judges typically gave minors that time.
Cassin said the authorities overseeing immigration courts have instructed judges not to do so. In many cases during April hearings, Sponzo cited those instructions at the end of the matters she heard.
Cassin is among more than 100 immigration judges who have been fired since Trump returned to office. Some judges who lost their jobs said they believed they were pushed out because the administration saw them as not aligned with its agenda. They also said they received no official explanation for their firings. Sponzo was fired recently as well and could not be reached for comment. The Justice Department did not respond to questions about the firings.
The pressure on minors isn’t limited to immigration courts. Early in Trump’s second term. the administration moved to curb funding for advocacy groups that provide legal services to unaccompanied minors. It also ended a Biden-era policy known as “deferred action,” which had protected minors who were granted SIJ from deportation. SIJ by itself does not confer legal status. and deferred action was used to cover those with SIJ until they could get their green cards.
After advocacy groups took the administration to court, federal judges ordered the government to restore funding for legal assistance and access to deferred action for SIJ recipients. Despite those rulings, some legal advocates said they still have not been paid what they were owed.
Earlier this month, several groups said federal agents appeared at their Washington-area offices, seeking to look at client files even though the groups said the agents did not have warrants. The advocates said they saw the move as an attempt to intimidate them.
As for deferred action, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said in a statement that the agency would grant it only under “compelling circumstances on a case-by-case basis.” DHS. which oversees USCIS and ICE. emphasized in an email that having SIJ “does NOT confer lawful status. ” and that “any recipient may be subject to removal.” DHS did not respond to a question about the agents who visited advocates’ offices.
In the last year, the administration said it has tracked down 146,000 of the unaccompanied minors who entered the country under Biden to check on their well-being. DHS said the majority of those children were released to parents or other close relatives.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said in a June press conference that some welfare checks found minors doing fine with their families. But Mullin also asserted that he’d found children in the hands of rapists and other criminals. saying. “We start digging into these cases and you start hearing absolute horrific things.” When asked for verifiable details about the specific cases he mentioned. DHS did not respond.
A DHS spokesperson later sent a list of 16 people who had sponsored immigrant minors and had previously been charged with crimes including assault. drug trafficking or domestic violence. Justice Department officials said they’d indicted less than a handful of people on charges of smuggling or exploiting immigrant minors. No officials from DHS or the Justice Department explained what had become of any of the children connected to those indictments.
Mullin said that as for immigrants who entered the U.S. as children and are now adults, “we are working on the process of sending them back.”
For Chavez, the fight now is personal and immediate. ProPublica spoke with him over video calls from the Louisiana detention center, where he has been locked up for six months.
A man in Chavez’s cellblock, Carlos Della Valle, recognized Chavez’s sleeping pattern as a silent cry for help. Della Valle had migrated to the United States from Mexico and had a son around Chavez’s age. making his instincts sharpen. Even in detention, Chavez had an easy laugh and smile. Della Valle feared what the days meant in detention. worrying that Chavez was “losing valuable time that he’s never going to get back.”.
Winn was described by advocates and detainees as especially tough. Two migrants died there earlier this year. One death was reportedly caused by cardiovascular disease, and authorities had not determined a cause for the other.
A recent report by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General described unsafe and unsanitary conditions at Winn. including leaking ceilings. dirty food prep areas. and an incident in which a guard put a detainee in a prohibited choke hold. A DHS spokesperson said the agency is working to address the issues raised in the report and added. “our death rates are lower than most state prisons.”.
Della Valle began nudging Chavez out of bed in the mornings and put him to work helping keep their cellblock clean. Detainees were given an hour a day outside, sometimes less.
Chavez briefly took a job in the barber shop that paid the standard wage for detention—$1 a day—but he said giving haircuts to around 80 men in a shift was grueling enough that he lasted only a month. He and Della Valle then turned to the Bible together, poring over passages. They sat together for most meals. Chavez learned to mix packets of powdered juice the way Della Valle liked it.
Della Valle offered to help Chavez navigate the immigration system. He knew it well. In 1997, he’d twice illegally entered the United States. He was deported the first time but illegally entered again, married a U.S. citizen soon after, and settled in Pennsylvania. Because of that reentry—described here as a felony—he has been ineligible to regularize his status.
For years, he said authorities generally avoided targeting immigrants with long ties to communities like his. “Not anymore.”
He said he was intercepted when he and his wife returned from a Virgin Islands vacation, though he was released on bond. Months later, he was taken into ICE detention. By the time he met Chavez, he had spent months being transferred among close to a dozen holding facilities.
When Della Valle says it was hard to see Chavez, he isn’t speaking in theory. He said other men in the cell worried too. They nicknamed Chavez “El Niño.” Della Valle said, “It was hard to see him, you know, because he’s just a boy. He’s not a grown man. I had to do whatever I could for him.”
Della Valle has since been released and is now advocating for Chavez’s release.
The administration’s changes have pushed more cases through the system faster, but federal courts have not disappeared from the picture. Evidence from federal judges ordering releases or bond hearings suggests the legal fight is still volatile.
The National Immigration Project tracked cases of 263 immigrants who entered the country as unaccompanied minors and SIJ applicants. It found federal judges ordered releases or bond hearings in all but 12 of those cases since the start of the second Trump administration. In March, U.S. District Judge Gary Brown issued a rebuke in one such case. writing. “The laws of human decency condemn such villainy.” He also wrote that while the administration can set policy. it is “forbidden from trampling our system of laws — a system which has safeguarded this nation for close to 250 years.”.
Among those recently released was 20-year-old Fredy Martinez, born in Honduras. He was a teenager when he crossed the border as an unaccompanied minor and later graduated from high school in Texas. He was delivering a DoorDash order on his bike when he was detained, according to court documents. He was held for eight months at a sprawling tent detention camp in El Paso. Texas. described here as deeply troubled. and the camp has seen a measles outbreak and detainee deaths—including one ruled a homicide—before a federal judge found his detention was illegal and ordered him released. DHS did not respond to a question about the center.
Another teenager. Carlos. from Guatemala. said he was detained on his way to work at a car wash in Rockland County. New York. when he was 18. despite having been granted SIJ and deferred action. Carlos said he was flown over 1. 000 miles to a detention facility in Louisiana. though not the same one described for Chavez. He said he asked to be identified only by his first name due to his ongoing immigration case. After his arrest. he said. “I was just thinking that I would never see my family again.” He was held for more than two months before a federal judge set him free.
The DHS spokesperson said federal court rulings against the administration “should come as no surprise,” adding that “many activist judges have attempted to thwart President Trump from fulfilling the American people’s mandate.”
Even with court pushback, Chavez’s days in detention have kept shrinking. Six months into his detention, he is on his own. He has been ordered deported but is appealing the decision and filed a habeas petition.
Della Valle’s release was bittersweet for Chavez, and the difference is real: Della Valle is now back home. His wife. Angela Della Valle. helped force movement through advocacy. and Della Valle said he feels pangs of guilt about leaving Chavez behind. He still speaks to Chavez most days and tries to keep his spirits up. but he worries his words don’t carry the same weight now that he’s out.
To help Chavez’s family. Della Valle and Angela Della Valle have helped Chavez’s sister. Mayuri Chavez. pay off his outstanding traffic tickets and prepare his defense. They started a letter-writing campaign. They have passed out flyers with a picture of a chair Chavez made in carpentry class. asking people to color it in and send messages of encouragement.
Children in an Alabama classroom colored pages to support Chavez.
While Chavez is still detained, the story he expected to live has been rearranged again and again. He has been moved to different cells multiple times. including a cell with only a single functional shower for dozens of men. The video call system often malfunctioned. Someone stole his small notebook, in which he had carefully written down telephone numbers of people he could reach outside.
He said he once dreamed he was free. When he woke up and realized he was still in detention, he panicked and had trouble breathing.
He has been trying to keep the routine he started when Della Valle was there. but each passing week is harder. In detention interviews, Chavez worried about losing half his junior year of high school. He missed a required English test and a deadline to turn in a history project. With the school year over. he said he is unclear if he will be able to make up assignments in time to graduate.
He said braces his sister paid for could become meaningless without regular adjustments. He missed the birth of his new nephew and isn’t sure he’ll meet him.
“I had so many plans,” Chavez said. “but now everything is ruined.”
Behind his story is a broader shift in federal policy and enforcement: protections that once slowed the system enough for minors to be represented, heard, and processed through channels built for their vulnerability are being weakened while deportation orders stack up fast.
Chavez is still appealing. But in Winnfield, as the days blur and the nights creak, the question he can’t stop asking is the one that turns policy into something you feel: how long can a kid keep being treated like a case number before the rest of their life becomes a casualty too?
Elder Chavez SIJ Special Immigrant Juvenile Status unaccompanied minors ICE deportation orders immigration courts deferred action Winn Correctional Center Markwayne Mullin Gary Brown habeas petition