Stories of these unannounced visits popped up around the country — agents who attempted to gain access to two elementary schools in Los Angeles; agents who showed up “five deep and armed” at the home of an immigration lawyer’s 19-year-old client in Virginia; agents who interviewed a terrified 16-year-old Honduran girl at her uncle’s house in Washington state.

Department of Homeland Security officials have said the welfare checks are part of an ongoing effort to ensure that unaccompanied children “are safe and not being exploited, abused, and sex trafficked.”

Immigrant advocates say some visits have led to children being forced to leave the country with their deported parents or being removed from their sponsors and placed in federal custody.

Advocates point to the case of a 17-year-old Honduran in Hawaii whose older brother had been detained by federal agents. The boy was transported to a facility for unaccompanied youths in California.

“This is just par for the course for an administration that has staked their claim on making life so incredibly difficult for immigrants at large that they think people will leave and not come to the U.S.,” said Jen Smyers, former chief of staff under the Biden administration for the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is responsible for the care of unaccompanied children.

Fear of the welfare checks “drives people underground, increases exploitation and trafficking,” Smyers said. “And they’re doing it with this perverse narrative by saying that they care about kids. But all they’re doing is wrecking these kids’ lives.”

The Trump administration has placed under review the roughly 450,000 children who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border without their parents during President Biden’s term

Children who arrive unaccompanied by a parent are placed in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is under the Department of Health and Human Services. The department is required to screen adult sponsors who volunteer to care for the children, usually their parents or other relatives.

Shortly after President Trump took office, his administration formulated a multi-agency plan to track down unaccompanied children, investigate whether they are being subjected to human trafficking and deport those who are removable. An internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo, obtained by The Times, details the four-phase operation.

The memo indicates that agents should prioritize youths who didn’t show up for an immigration hearing, those whom the government has not been able to contact since they were released to sponsors, those who are considered a threat to public safety and those with deportation orders.

The agency is also looking closely at youths released from federal custody to sponsors who are not blood relatives, including so-called super sponsors who have taken in more than three unaccompanied children.

The sponsorship program has been beset by problems in recent years. The federal government has failed to properly vet some sponsors, according to a federal watchdog report from last year. Thousands of children rapidly released from government shelters were later exploited by major companies.

Last month, a federal grand jury indicted a man on allegations that he lured a 14-year-old girl from Guatemala to the U.S. and falsely claimed she was his sister to gain custody as her sponsor.

About 100 children have been removed from their sponsors this year and returned to federal custody, the Associated Press reported, and 450 cases with complaints have been referred to federal law enforcement.

The review of sponsorships under the Trump administration is being led by two branches of ICE: Enforcement and Removal Operations, or ERO, and Homeland Security Investigations, or HSI.

Along with combating human trafficking, the effort aims to identify possible candidates for deportation. Referring to unaccompanied children as “UAC,” the memo states: “ERO officers should remember they are to enforce final orders of removal, where possible, and HSI will pursue criminal options for UAC who have committed crimes.”

The Homeland Security and Health and Human Services departments did not respond to a request for comment.

Over the last two months, immigration attorneys say, agents have attempted to intimidate minors.

In one instance in California, underage clients answered the door to find agents in casual wear asking about their mother and whether they had a job. Another family reported to their attorney that HSI agents arrived while the minor was at school, yet the agents returned four times in one day looking for the student.

The tactic puts in jeopardy sponsors who lack legal authorization to be in the country or live in mixed-status households, said Karina Ramos, a managing attorney at the Los Angeles-based Immigrant Defenders Law Center.

“It’s definitely going to have a chilling effect on a sponsor, if they know there are going to be immigration officers questioning their status,” she said.

The case of the teenager in Hawaii began April 9 when his older brother was arrested on suspicion of misdemeanor illegal entry, according to someone with knowledge of the case.

The teen had entered the country unaccompanied and was previously in federal custody in Texas. He was released to his older brother’s care in 2023. According to the person with knowledge of the case, when the teen was apprehended last month, agents considered whether they could deport him along with his brother.

After his older brother was apprehended, the 17-year-old was placed in a facility for unaccompanied youths in California. Hawaii has no Office of Refugee Resettlement facilities.

Before he was transported to California, teachers who knew the student attempted to aid his release, according to local advocates and the Honolulu Civil Beat. The teachers carried documents showing his aunt could take custody of him if he was released to her.

Advocates said there are intersecting operations in Hawaii — welfare checks on unaccompanied children and enforcement actions against deportable immigrants. At least four immigrant children in two separate cases were recently removed with their parents, who were targeted for deportation, advocates said.

“Having a parallel directive to remove grown-ups from children is never in the best interest of the child,” said Mary Miller Flowers, director of policy and legislative affairs at the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights. “So it feels like it’s a euphemism for enforcement actions.”

In other parts of the country, young immigrants and their adult sponsors are grappling with what the welfare checks could spell for them.

In Houston, Alexa Sendukas, managing attorney for the Galveston-Houston Immigrant Representation Project, said 21 clients have experienced welfare checks in recent weeks. Those who let agents inside their homes told her that agents walked from room to room, asking questions and taking photos.

In a meeting last week, HSI agents told Sendukas that they had rescued two children from a trafficking situation in the Houston area and found a sponsor who was producing child exploitation material. But she remains skeptical.

“We’ve heard the example of the Hawaii case,” she said, adding that advocates worry that agents doing welfare checks are gathering information they can use in the future. Referring to the ICE memo, she said, “The guidance suggests a multiphase initiative — what does the next phase look like?”

In San Diego, federal agents recently conducted a wellness check at the residence of a girl represented by immigration attorney Ian Seruelo. She is in the process of receiving special immigration juvenile status, he said.

A day after the wellness check, as the girl was visiting her parents, who live at a different location, federal agents stopped them while they were driving to church and detained them for several hours, Seruelo said.

The parents have no criminal record but are undocumented, and their status was probably known to officials, Seruelo said, because they had been in deportation proceedings that were dropped. Neither the girl nor her parents are in custody, he said.

Seruelo said he found the timing of the parents’ detention suspect. “I think they were using the wellness check to get information about the parents,” he said.

Smyers, the former Health and Human Services official, said the public safety and border security justifications noted in the ICE memo about tracking down unaccompanied children are the same justifications used by Stephen Miller, the federal official and mastermind behind the separation of thousands of families at the southern border during President Trump’s first term.

“The American public should be just as galvanized against this as they were to family separation at the border,” she said.

Castillo reported from Washington and Gomez from Los Angeles.

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The motion to dismiss the suit against Southwest Key Programs was filed after the federal government announced it had moved all unaccompanied children to other shelters.

The complaint, filed last year during the Biden administration, alleged a litany of offenses between 2015 and 2023 as Southwest Key Programs, which operates migrant shelters in Texas, Arizona and California, amassed nearly $3 billion in contracts from the Department of Health and Human Services.

The agency said it stopped sending unaccompanied children to the provider’s facilities “out of continuing concerns relating to these placements,” and said it would review grants going to the contractor. In view of the agency’s action, the Department of Justice has dismissed its lawsuit against Southwest Key, HHS said in a statement.

The shelter provider said they were pleased with the decision to dismiss the case. “Southwest Key strongly denied the claims relating to child sexual abuse in our shelters, and there is no settlement or payment required,” the statement Wednesday evening said.

“We always believed the facts would prove the allegations to be without merit. We thank the Government for its commitment to reviewing the whole record and dropping the case with prejudice,” they added.

This week, Southwest Key Programs furloughed employees across the country. “Due to the unforeseen federal funding freeze and the stop placement order on our unaccompanied minor shelters and Home Study Post Release programs by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, we have made the difficult decision to furlough approximately 5,000 Southwest Key Programs’ employees,” the company said in a statement shared Tuesday.

According to allegations in the 2024 lawsuit, Southwest Key employees, including supervisors, raped, inappropriately touched or solicited sex and nude images of children beginning at least in 2015.

Among the accusations: One employee “repeatedly sexually abused” three girls ages 5, 8 and 11 at the Casa Franklin shelter in El Paso, Texas, with the 8-year-old telling investigators the worker “entered their bedrooms in the middle of the night to touch their ‘private area.’”

The lawsuit also alleged that another employee, at a shelter in Mesa, Arizona, took a 15-year-old boy to a hotel and paid him to perform sexual acts for several days in 2020.

Children were warned not to report the alleged abuse and threatened with violence against themselves or their families if they did, according to the lawsuit. Victims testified that in some instances, other workers knew about the abuse but failed to report or concealed it, the complaint said.

“DOJ’s lawsuit revealed horrific sexual abuse and inhumane treatment of children detained in Southwest Key shelters,” said Leecia Welch, an attorney who represents unaccompanied children in a separate case. “It’s shocking to me that the government now turns a blind eye to their own contractor’s actions. I hope the impacted children will have other legal recourse and support in healing from their abuse.”

The lawsuit may not be over. On Wednesday, the National Center for Youth Law asked the court not to dismiss the case and grant them an opportunity to formally intervene on behalf of those affected by the alleged abuse. If granted, they would have 30 days to file a motion in the lawsuit.

At least two employees have been indicted on criminal charges related to the allegations since 2020.

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The organizations say the children are at risk because the Trump administration suspended a key program late Tuesday, ordering that the Acacia Center for Justice and its subcontractors immediately stop work on a $200 million contract to provide representation for children entering the country alone.

Daniela Hernandez, an immigration attorney who provides free legal services to about 60 children in Pasadena, California, said during a news conference Wednesday that some of her clients — who are as young as 2 — have court hearings as soon as Friday.

“What is this 2-year-old client supposed to do without her attorney?” she said. “Who will speak for her in court? Who will explain to her and all of our other clients in foster care who have not only nobody, no adult in the United States to care for them, that they will now have to navigate a very complex legal immigration system on their own?”

The Interior Department gave no explanation for the stop-work order, telling the group only that it was done for “causes outside of your control” and should not be interpreted as a judgment of poor performance. The halt remains in effect until further notice.

In a statement Wednesday, the department said it has agreements to support other agencies but does not fund or operate the program and couldn’t answer questions about it. The Department of Health and Human Services Department, which oversees unaccompanied migrant children, did not respond to requests for comment.

At a San Diego immigration court Wednesday, a 5-year-old girl from Mexico facing deportation sat before Judge Olga Attia. Attia asked if the girl could have some coloring books — “that may be a little more fun,” she told her.

As the girl drew, the judge explained the case to her, her 13-year-old sister and her 15-year-old brother. All three children were arrested for crossing the border illegally, without their parents, in March 2024. Their mother attended the hearing — she entered the U.S. at a different time than her children, who have their own immigration cases.

And they were navigating it all without a lawyer.

The mother said they couldn’t afford one. Attia recommended a nonprofit that might give guidance and scheduled another hearing in May.

But with the contract that was ended Tuesday, options for affordable legal guidance are narrowing for this family and thousands of others involving unaccompanied children.

Acacia has a network of 85 organizations nationwide that work with children under 18. About 26,000 migrant children get direct legal representation under the contract while roughly 100,000 get some kind of legal advice, often through presentations lawyers hold for children while they are in government-run shelters just after arriving in the U.S.

People fighting deportation do not have the same right to representation as people going through criminal courts, although they can hire private attorneys.

But there has been some recognition that children navigating the immigration court system without a parent or guardian are especially vulnerable.

The Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2008 created special protections for children who arrive in the U.S. without a parent or a legal guardian. It said the government should facilitate legal representation for the children put into deportation proceedings, though it did not mandate every child have a lawyer.

Acacia and its subcontractors recruit and train lawyers and work with private attorneys who provide free legal representation for the children.

Unaccompanied children can request asylum, juvenile immigration status, or visas for victims of sexual exploitation. Most of the children don’t speak English and need interpreters.

“You have these kids who are thrust into this adult-like situation with very severe consequences,” said Jennifer Podkul, vice president for policy and advocacy at Kids In Need of Defense, citing that about 50% of children have legal representation in immigration court.

Children will be stuck in the system or off the grid, and cases won’t be processed, attorneys and experts said.

Melissa L. Lopez is executive director of a group that receives funding through the program that was suspended, and she said they have a legal and ethical obligation to continue helping the estimated 2,000 children they represent.

“We will do what is best for our clients,” said Lopez, of El Paso, Texas-based Estrella del Paso. The group also gives legal presentations in shelters so children know their rights, but they’ve been barred from doing that, she said.

“They will be expected to go to court alone and uninformed,” she said.

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