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A well-meaning law has opened a child smuggling loophole at our border

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by Amy Suzanne Martin, opinion contributor - 04/23/26 7:30 AM ET

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by Amy Suzanne Martin, opinion contributor - 04/23/26 7:30 AM ET

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AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills

A seven-year-old unaccompanied minor, waiting to be taken to a border patrol intake area in 2021.

President Trump ran on securing the border and ending the chaos. His administration has dramatically reduced illegal crossings, delivered historic deportations and virtually ended refugee admissions.

Yet one yawning gap persists: The border remains dangerously attractive for unaccompanied children, because the Trump administration has not urged Congress to repeal the legal machinery that incentivizes cartel child-smuggling.

Even as alien families face deportation, Section 235 of the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 continues to lure unaccompanied children into the hands of criminal cartels — and then to funnel them into the U.S. for legal “protection.”

The statute gives immigration officers a maximum of 48 hours to screen Mexican and Canadian children for signs of severe trafficking, credible fear of persecution, or risk upon return. Children from non-contiguous countries, such as Guatemala, bypass even that step and go straight into the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement. At that point, sponsors and non-profit organizations’ attorneys then file to acquire for them special immigrant juvenile status, asylum, or T-visas.

Kids in Need of Defense, an organization that assigns attorneys to represent these minors, reported $62.5 million in federal funding from the Office of Refugee Resettlement in 2024. The group, which was founded in tandem with the passage of Section 235, champions this pipeline and lobbies for more funding for more lawyers and more legal protections.

But unfortunately, as the 2024 HHS Office of the Inspector General report found, the Office of Refugee Resettlement has prioritized rapid placement ahead of child safety and the thorough vetting of sponsors. The debate over screening and lawyering is just misdirection: The statute itself advertises to cartels that debt-bonded children will receive U.S. legal shelter, and the cartels take advantage of this.

Whistleblowers and subject-matter experts have explained to Congress how legal “protection” cycles children back into cartel networks. The inspector general report confirms instances where trafficking indicators were ignored. Cartel affiliates at the border literally hand children slips of paper with contact details for sponsors, some of them “with criminal records that included domestic violence and child molestation.” Documented releases to sponsors with confirmed MS-13 gang ties were reported to Congress as early as 2015.

Recent credible investigative reporting suggests that cartel networks in Juarez, just ten miles from El Paso, abduct pregnant women in order to traffic their infants for profit. Placing unaccompanied children with sponsors linked to such groups exposes vulnerable minors to unacceptable risk.

Todd Bensman, now senior advisor to Border Czar Tom Homan, documented this in his 2019 reporting and his 2023 book “Overrun.” The Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act’s differential screening turns every accompanying minor into a prized “Golden Ticket” into the U.S. Bensman traced the incentive all the way to the border handoff point, where a child’s presence unlocks speedy release for fraudulent family groups. Once that ticket is redeemed and the child is transferred to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the downstream harms continue unchecked.

Child placements exploded under former President Joe Biden’s border policies, peaking at 128,904 in fiscal 2022. But even under Trump’s stricter enforcement, the Office of Refugee Resettlement still placed roughly 24,000 unaccompanied children in fiscal 2025. The statutory structure ensures that those numbers will surge again, and the human cost is devastating. Tens of thousands of children have vanished from follow-up — their court cases are quietly closed when the minors fail to appear.

And sustained funding suggests that a continued influx of minors is anticipated. The capacity to process and fund thousands remains fully intact, as shown by the $4.2 billion appropriated in fiscal 2026 for the unaccompanied children program, the fiscal 2027 request for a further $3.4 billion supporting roughly 6,500 beds, and a $225 million transportation task order awarded on April 1.

This absurdity — children without visas, continuing to pour across the border even as immigration enforcement intensifies — has gone largely u