Legal advocates seek to halt CBP policy pressuring unaccompanied children to self-deport

By VALERIE GONZALEZ

McALLEN, Texas (AP) — Legal advocates filed a motion Tuesday seeking to stop U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents from urging immigrant children entering the country without their parents to voluntarily deport themselves under a federal policy introduced last year.

Border agents who arrest unaccompanied immigrant children who enter the country illegally are required by the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 to send them to a federal shelter under a different agency, the Office of Refugee Resettlement. At the shelters, children have access to attorneys and an immigration judge, and they can talk to their parents over the phone before they agree to self-deport or seek other options.

The new policy introduces the self-deportation option before children enter the shelter, a practice that started in September 2025, according to testimony from CBP officials filed in the lawsuit.

If children decline to voluntarily return, the policy threatens to detain them for long periods of time, arrest and prosecute their adult sponsors living in the U.S., and bar them from applying for a visa in the future, legal advocates said in Tuesday’s motion.

The attorneys, r...