The Atlantic’s Caitlin Dickerson has a must-read piece on the children left behind when their parents are deported.
In the article, Dickerson talks to parents who wanted to take their children with them when they were deported but weren’t reunited before they were flown to their home countries. Informal networks of friends, relatives, and coworkers often band together to care for children like this. Some end up in foster care.
Some of the children were born abroad and arrived when their parents entered the United States. For those children, getting back to their parents often means turning themselves in to the Department of Homeland Security and waiting for a flight to reunite them.
Other children are American citizens, born here while their parents’ immigration cases languished in backlogs. Their journey to reunification is not necessarily easy, especially when both parents have been removed.
Speed and efficiency in immigration enforcement have been hallmarks of the second Trump Administration. It has utilized many legal tools to close immigration cases quickly and encouraged many detainees to take voluntary departure rather than wait for a case to proceed through appeals.
The Department of Homeland Security says parents are given the opportunity to take their children with them. However, it is not clear that the policy is consistently applied, something worth Congress’ attention.
Congress funded the administration’s enforcement policies, and it can scrutinize them, too. Congressional oversight should help determine if cases like the ones Dickerson investigated are outliers or sadly common.
Figure of the Month
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Fiscal Year 2026, which ended in September, was the first year on record that the United States failed to resettle any Christian refugees fleeing persecution, according to U.S. State Department data analyzed by World Relief. Of the refugees resettled in 2026, 16,287 were Afrikaners; the other five were Afghans but not from religious minority groups.
Data Dive
- According to the most recent published government data, the U.S. State Department cut legal immigration in half, issuing only 26,000 immigrant visas in February, compared to an average of 52,000 per month in past years.
- Maine’s 33,079 foreign-born workers generated an estimated $177 million in state income tax revenue from 2020 to 2024, according to a new Maine Office of New Americans report. It estimates that immigrant employment supports nearly 74,000 jobs and almost $15 billion in economic output across the state.
- U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) processing times increased for several types of forms, applications, and steps in the immigration process in fiscal year 2026. USCIS data show that median naturalization processing times rose from 5.6 months in fiscal year 2025 to 7.1 months through July 2026, while nonpremium temporary worker petitions increased from 3.5 months to 5.2 months.
- Immigration judges completed 104,028 immigration court cases in July, the second consecutive month with more than 100,000 case completions, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC).
What I’m Reading
- The Wall Street Journal detailed the high cost of immigration enforcement on home builders. Nearly two-thirds of builders say their workforce has been negatively impacted, with roofers, painters, and framers particularly hard hit. The result is a 4.2% increase in the cost of labor, according to the National Association of Home Builders.
- The Department of Homeland Security said protections will remain in place for Temporary Protected Status holders from Ukraine and Sudan. Protections expired October 19, but the administration postponed a formal decision on extending or cancelling these programs.
- CNN reported inside an immigration courtroom in Harlingen, Texas, where children as young as 3 are appearing before judges who will decide whether they can remain in the United States. Some children are without legal representation, and advocates have raised concerns that cases are moving so rapidly that those representing the children don’t have adequate time to prepare their cases.
- ProPublica catalogued more than 500 cases of American citizens being detained by the Department of Homeland Security during its immigration enforcement activities.
- The Trump Administration is preventing eight tech companies from sponsoring legal permanent residence, or green cards, for skilled workers, alleging abuse of the H-1B visa system. The Permanent Labor Certification Program (PERM) allows employers to sponsor certain foreign workers for employment-based green cards.
- The Internal Revenue Service is preparing to ask taxpayers on next year’s tax return form whether they are U.S. citizens, nationals, or legally authorized to work, according to The New York Times. Tax and immigration experts said the citizenship question is unnecessary and could discourage undocumented immigrants from filing because they fear their information could be used for immigration enforcement. Undocumented immigrants pay tens of billions of dollars in taxes every year, including through returns filed with individual taxpayer identification numbers.
- Idaho is the fourth-largest milk producer in the country, but its dairy industry is struggling to find enough workers. The state advertised 7,500 jobs through the H-2A temporary agricultural worker program last year, and only four local residents applied. Dairies have an additional challenge: Because H-2A is limited to seasonal work, dairy farms generally cannot use the program for year-round jobs. Rick Naerebout, CEO of the Idaho Dairymen’s Association, estimates that as many as 90% of workers at the state’s roughly 350 dairies may lack legal status.
- World Education Services (WES) published a new report, “Built to Work: Designing Immigration and Integration Systems for Success.” The framework is designed to connect immigration policy and economic integration rather than keeping them siloed
Upcoming Events
- Nov. 16 – The Center on Immigration and Child Welfare Initiative: 23rd Immigration Law & Policy Conference
Bush Institute Insights
- The Bush Institute’s Joseph Kim, Program Manager of Global Policy and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)’s Victor Cha released a new report detailing human rights abuses in the Russian city of Yelabuga, where Vladimir Putin’s regime is using forced labor to produce drones to further its war in Ukraine. The workers are a combination of Russian youth, foreign workers lured by false job prospects whose passports are seized on arrival, and North Koreans sent to by the regime whose wages are withheld to benefit Kim Jong Un’s dictatorship.
