The Trump administration is aiming to radically speed up immigration cases and deportations of migrant children.

The move comes as officials express concern over the cost of sheltering unaccompanied child migrants. The average time they spend in federal custody has soared to almost seven months, according to the most recent data.

In 2024, under President Joe Biden, kids typically stayed in the system for about a month. The costs of shelter beds per day can range from about $250 per child, per day, to a staggering $775 a day in the case of some emergency influx provision, according to a 2021 estimate.

In March, there were almost 2,200 children under the care of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the agency that funds shelters across 24 states.

Given that the raw number of children in the system has skyrocketed, the federal government is shouldering a greater financial burden to house them.

With this added pressure, the Trump administration has moved up immigration hearings for some migrant children by weeks or even months, according to CNN.

Unlike regular courts, immigration courts are largely under the control of the executive branch, meaning the White House has the power to schedule hearings whenever it pleases.

According to lawyers who spoke with CNN, kids as young as four years old in immigration custody have been forced to repeatedly appear in court. At times, they do not have legal counsel and are expected to give updates on their case. 

Emily Norman, regional director for the east coast at Kids in Need of Defense, told CNN that children sometimes wet their pants under all the pressure.

Many of the migrant children in custody are there because their parents or guardians were detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Advocates argue that the administration's rushed timeline risks kids wrongly being sent back to countries they were fleeing.

'They're all some combination of confused, scared and frustrated,' Scott Bassett, an attorney at the Children's Program at America Center for Immigrant Rights, told CNN.

President Donald Trump and his allies have argued it is necessary to focus their attention on minors because many of them came unaccompanied under the Biden administration. 

They say thousands of these children are missing and need to be found, a claim former Biden officials argue is exaggerated.

According to CNN, a five-year-old who recently arrived unaccompanied to the US had an immigration hearing a week or two after arrival. In Texas, roughly 300 children living in shelters had their hearings moved up, many of them with little prior warning.

Andrew Nixon, a spokesman for Department of Health and Human Services, told the Daily Mail that his agency 'is focused on resolving cases involving unaccompanied children as quickly and efficiently as possible, consistent with the law'.

'Many of these children are at risk of trafficking and exploitation, and in some cases are brought across the border by cartels under dangerous and coercive conditions,' Nixon said. 'Moving cases forward helps disrupt those networks and ensures children are returned to safe environments as quickly as possible. Reducing time in custody also lowers taxpayer costs and ensures the system is operating as intended.'

A White House official told the Daily Mail that it has intelligence from law enforcement agencies that 'cartels are attempting to traffic children across the Southern Border, and in many cases these kids are kidnapped from their families in their home countries.' 

That same official said the Trump administration is 'working to disrupt cartel plots and humanely return trafficked children to their homes and families as expeditiously as possible'. 

However, advocacy groups say it has become very difficult for kids to be released from custody to US-based relatives, with the administration increasingly pursuing deportation as a first resort.

Advocates and lawyers say kids simply do not know when or if they will be released and whether they will obtain immigration relief or be deported back to their country of origin.

'It's driving toward getting these kids out of the country,' Bassett said. 'They feel the walls are closing in because they are.'

Attorneys also say it's already difficult to establish trusting relationships with the unaccompanied minors they try to represent, largely because of the traumatic experiences many of them have while in their home country or during their trip to the US.

Some children, unable to get relief, are voluntarily going back to their countries, CNN reported. Attorneys say that kids should instead be released to US-based sponsors such as a parent.

This had been standard operating procedure, but the Trump administration has introduced a new, stricter vetting process for potential sponsors.

Operation Guardian Trace empowers immigration officers to arrest potential caregivers for children, leading to those caregivers not claiming the kids out of fear that they will be deported.

One way children previously sought immigration relief was through the special immigrant juvenile process, which allows minors who have been abused or abandoned to get a green card.

However, obtaining this status usually takes months, meaning they may not be approved in time if their hearings are moved up or if they are moved to a different facility.

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