An ICE contractor fingerprints a detained immigrant at a processing center on October 14, 2015 in Camarillo, California. The agency says it builds deportation cases against thousands of undocumented immigrants and Green Card holders convicted of crimes. | John Moore/Getty Images New fingerprint checks could exacerbate shelter crunch for migrant kids

Separating children from their parents at the border is creating havoc — but a new Trump administration fingerprinting policy may create even more in the future by discouraging their families from claiming them.

Even before the White House imposed zero-tolerance border enforcement that led to an explosion in family separations, the Trump administration decided to collect biometrics from people who take custody of unaccompanied minors — with no guarantee that it won’t be used for enforcement.


The Health and Human Resources Department, which oversees the care of the unaccompanied minors, signed a memorandum of agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in April that enabled ICE to check the immigration status of the adults who retrieve those minors from custody, along with their criminal history.

“There is nothing in that memorandum of agreement that restricts how that information might be used for enforcement purposes,” said Mark Greenberg, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. Under former President Barack Obama, Greenberg led the HHS Administration for Children and Families.

Greenberg said the policy could have “an enormous chilling effect” on attempts by parents or guardians to reunite with unaccompanied minors. The fingerprints could be collected from any adult in the child’s intended household.

The new policy presents another obstacle placed between migrant children and their parents or guardians. In recent weeks, news reports have chronicled stories of desperate parents trying to locate their kids, including parents deported before they’re able to reconnect.

More than 2,300 children were separated from adults over a roughly five-week period in May and June, according to DHS data released Monday by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).

Under the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy, DHS will refer all people suspected of crossing the border for prosecution under federal illegal entry and reentry statutes. When parents head to detention centers, their children become “unaccompanied.”

The new fingerprint policy comes as Trump’s aggressive anti-immigration policies already appeared to be driving down the proportion of parents who show up to retrieve children from federal custody.

In fiscal 2018, the percentage of parents picking up unaccompanied minors plummeted to 42 percent compared to approximately 60 percent three years earlier, according to congressional testimony and a report from the Government Accountability Office.

In addition to the memorandum, the administration published a proposed rule in May that would allow ICE to collect biometric data of potential sponsors and members of their households.

A spokesman for the Administration for Children and Families didn't say whether the fingerprint checks had already begun, or when they might start. But it’s clear the enhanced security measures could scare away some parents — and potentially leave shelters for minors even more inundated.

“If they’re afraid to come forward, then that’s going to increase the likelihood that these children remain in care for very long periods of time or indefinitely,” Greenberg told POLITICO.

The average length of time that unaccompanied minors spend in federal shelters risen to an average of 57 days in such facilities — a sharp increase over the 34 day-average in December 2016. With the enhanced immigration checks of sponsors, the wait will likely grow longer.

Steve Wagner, acting assistant secretary at the Administration for Children and Families, said during a May 29 on-the-record interview with reporters that people who decline to retrieve their children may not be fit to be parents. Wagner highlighted the need to vet sponsors of unaccompanied minors to avoid releasing them to a dangerous situation.

In one high-profile case in 2014, several unaccompanied children from Guatemala were released to human traffickers and forced them to work on an Ohio egg farm.

Still, critics argue the move to check immigration status is aimed more at deterring illegal immigration by making life in the U.S. more difficult.

The fingerprint policy wasn’t launched in tandem with the zero tolerance prosecution strategy on the border, but it could also contribute to the growing sense of chaos.

“I’m absolutely convinced this is being driven by Stephen Miller to create a crisis, so that [Republicans] have a favorable political environment leading into the election this November,” a DHS official told POLITICO. “They wanted an immigration crisis because they think that’s their best issue. And they had this problem that there wasn’t an immigration crisis.”