ICE Contracts Expand Police Ability to Track Immigrant Children

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has moved to expand its reach over immigrant children in the United States, with new federal contracts, fresh funding, and swift policy changes that deepen cooperation with local police and open access to personal data on sponsors. The series of steps, rolled out across early and mid-2025, give ICE broader tracking and detention powers over unaccompanied minors at the same time the government has tried to cut funding for children’s legal aid, sharpening concerns among advocates and attorneys about due process and child welfare.

At the center is a major funding surge passed by Congress in July 2025, which set aside $30 billion over four years specifically for ICE to track down, arrest, and deport immigrants, including children. The allocation, described as a 300% increase over ICE’s previous annual budget, enables the hiring of 10,000 new officers and an expansion of detention space for families and children. Agency contracts tied to the funding authorize long-term detention and surveillance, a shift that advocates say effectively guts earlier protections for minors. Officials have also urged local police departments to enter agreements with ICE, backed by a $10 billion unrestricted fund for border-related law enforcement, pulling city and county officers into federal immigration enforcement that includes tracking children and their sponsors.

The expanded operations hinge on a policy reversal at the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which, on March 25, 2025, issued an interim final rule allowing ORR to share information about sponsors of unaccompanied minors with ICE and other law enforcement agencies. The rule took effect immediately and now faces legal challenges. Until last year, ORR generally limited sharing sponsor data with immigration enforcement to protect children’s placements and to avoid scaring off potential caregivers, especially those without legal status. The new standard enables direct information flow to ICE about adults who step forward to care for unaccompanied minors, and, in practice, gives the agency a new layer of tracking data to identify children and their households.

Internal enforcement guidance has followed the policy shift. A memo dated February 23, 2025 directs ICE agents to conduct a nationwide search for unaccompanied minors for deportation, identifying those children as “flight risk, public safety, and border security.” The document highlights missed immigration court dates and placements with non-blood-relative sponsors as risk flags. In separate operational guidance, ICE has moved to widen sponsor vetting with biometric and familial checks, requiring fingerprinting of all adult household members and DNA testing to establish family ties. The agency has not publicly detailed how it will store or share DNA test results, but attorneys represent that the requirements are already discouraging non-blood relatives and undocumented adults from coming forward, leaving some children in shelters or federal care for prolonged periods.

The scale of ICE’s new authorities rests on troubling gaps flagged by a government watchdog last year. In an August 2024 report, the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General said ICE “was not able to account” for unaccompanied children who failed to appear for court or were not served with official charging paperwork known as a Notice to Appear. The same report found that between fiscal years 2019 and 2023, 32,000 unaccompanied children did not appear for court hearings, and 291,000 had not been issued a Notice to Appear as of May 2024, totaling 323,000 children across those categories. Officials have cited those figures to justify deeper enforcement and more aggressive tracking, even as legal providers and children’s advocates note that most of these minors are living with vetted sponsors and are reachable through counsel or family.

The funding push dramatically increases ICE’s footprint relative to the rest of federal law enforcement. ICE’s $28.7 billion budget for 2025 is nearly triple the prior year and exceeds the combined budgets of all non-immigration federal law enforcement agencies, according to policy summaries reviewed by legal groups. Congress simultaneously backed a policy goal to deport one million immigrants each year. Yet the plan did not include parallel resources for immigration courts, which are burdened by a backlog approaching 4 million cases. With more arrests feeding into a clogged docket and fewer lawyers to represent children, the system is set to produce more in-absentia removal orders and longer detention, attorneys say.

One of the swiftest changes came in the form of sponsor data-sharing. Under the new ORR rule, information that minors and sponsors provide for placement and safety screenings can be shared with ICE, potentially forming a pipeline from child welfare to immigration enforcement. Advocates warn that the arrangement blurs lines between a social service agency and a police function. It also raises the stakes for sponsors who may have lingering concerns about past orders of removal, pending asylum claims, or mixed-status households. While officials say the goal is to safeguard minors and ensure they appear in court, attorneys argue the policy will push potential sponsors away and keep children in federal custody longer.

ICE’s operational shift stretches well beyond federal agencies. With a $10 billion pot of unrestricted funds for border-related law enforcement, the administration has encouraged local police to sign cooperation agreements with ICE. In practice, that means city patrol officers and county sheriff deputies can be drawn into tracking immigrant families and unaccompanied minors, conducting checks at homes listed on sponsor applications or verifying attendance at immigration hearings. Police leaders have not publicly detailed how those resources will be allocated, but immigration lawyers say their clients already report more frequent home visits and welfare checks that appear tied to ORR disclosures.

As enforcement ratcheted up, the administration also moved to strip away legal support for the children at the center of these actions. On March 21, 2025, the government issued a near-total termination of legal services funding for unaccompanied children, a measure that attorneys warn would cut off basic orientation and representation in a system too complex for adults, much less minors.

“The funding cut would leave children without basic legal help at critical moments,” advocates said.

A federal judge temporarily restored the funding on April 1, 2025, but the program’s future remains uncertain. Public defenders and non-profit groups say on-again, off-again funding can be almost as disruptive as a full cutoff, because it forces organizations to freeze hiring, close intakes, or abandon training for new staff just as ICE steps up arrests and court filings.

The enforcement directives now zero in on children identified by ICE case teams as likely to miss court or avoid contact. The February 23 memo points agents to minors living with non-blood-relative sponsors, framing those placements as potential evasion. It also singles out those who have already missed hearings for targeted enforcement, even when missed appearances may stem from administrative errors, language barriers, or lack of notice. The agency’s focus on “flight risk” has alarmed advocates who note that minors frequently move for school, safety, or to reunite with a parent, causing notices to go astray. The prospect of DNA testing for family verification adds another hurdle, especially for relatives who cannot easily produce records from countries where civil registries are unreliable or unsafe to access.

The chain of policies is reshaping day-to-day decisions by immigrant families across the country. Community groups say parents without lawful status are reconsidering whether to step forward as sponsors for nieces and nephews, worried that ORR files could be mined for immigration enforcement. Some clergy and family friends—who have long served as safe emergency sponsors—are backing away too, fearing the new fingerprint and DNA requirements will expose entire households to ICE. In neighborhoods with long-standing immigrant communities, legal clinics report a rise in calls about police visits and sponsor checks that seem to track new ORR disclosures. Without new placement options, more children could remain in shelters or federal care facilities for weeks or months.

Even in cases where children have a strong claim for asylum or special immigrant juvenile status, lawyers say mounting logistical barriers can turn a winnable case into a removal order. Court backlogs mean children often wait months for a master calendar hearing, and missed notices can trigger immediate in-absentia orders. The absence of consistent legal aid leaves some minors without anyone to request changes of venue or file motions to reopen. Those vulnerabilities intersect with the new ICE guidance, which prioritizes minors with missed hearings for enforcement. In practice, the policy cycle can be self-reinforcing: as more children get ordered removed in absentia, ICE points to rising no-show numbers to rationalize broader tracking and arrests.

The DHS Inspector General’s 2024 findings remain a touchstone in the debate. The report concluded ICE “was not able to account” for children who missed court or lacked charging documents. Officials cite the 32,000 missed appearances and the 291,000 without Notices to Appear to argue for closer coordination among CBP, ORR, and ICE, and for stronger tracking from the moment a child is transferred into federal custody. But defense attorneys counter that the figures reflect administrative gaps—not an enforcement failure that demands surveillance and detention. They note that many children were deemed safe with sponsors, and that data handoffs between agencies, not absconding, often explain cases without NTAs or updated addresses.

The advocacy response has sharpened in recent months, as the scope of ICE’s database access and local police partnerships has become clearer. Public interest law groups and social workers argue the expanded net puts children at risk of longer confinement and family separation.

“Increased enforcement efforts around UACs and their sponsors are likely to discourage some potential sponsors from coming forward, especially non-blood relatives and the undocumented,” several organizations warned in a joint statement.

They also argue that leaning on local police can inflame distrust in neighborhoods where witnesses and victims already hesitate to report crimes, potentially weakening public safety.

As the legal fights play out, the immediate effects are being felt in placement offices and immigration courts. ORR caseworkers must now inform potential sponsors that their information can be shared with ICE, a disclosure that can halt a placement before it begins. Attorneys say they are fielding urgent requests from caregivers to understand whether a missed hearing will trigger a home visit or arrest. ICE’s budget and staffing increases mean more agents are available to pursue leads, and children with administrative issues—not criminal histories—are increasingly subject to enforcement actions that can end with detention or removal.

ICE has not published a detailed, public accounting of how it will implement the $30 billion allocation over the next four years, nor has the agency said how much of the funding will be directed to child-specific enforcement and detention. Policy summaries indicate that the overarching target is to deport a million people annually, and the 2025 budget of $28.7 billion sets the baseline for a more muscular enforcement posture in the year ahead. Meanwhile, the courts remain a bottleneck. Without new immigration judges, spikes in arrests will not translate into faster case resolutions, and children could spend longer periods in limbo, whether in shelters, with sponsors wary of flagging themselves, or in detention.

For families and children navigating the process, the shifts have turned routine steps into calculated risks. Fingerprinting an entire household can expose undocumented adults to removal. DNA testing can be invasive and hard to arrange across borders. A court date mailed to an old address can cascade into an in-absentia order and then a knock on the door by local police working with ICE. Supporters of stricter enforcement say these steps are necessary to ensure accountability and attendance at hearings. Opponents say the policies conflate child welfare with deportation and will harm children who fled violence and instability, only to face heightened surveillance and the threat of long detention in the United States.

What happens next will likely be decided in the courts and in agency rulemaking. The ORR interim final rule faces legal challenges that could curb or reverse parts of the data-sharing regime. The temporary restoration of legal services funding could become permanent, or lapse again, depending on how judges assess the government’s authority to halt the program. Civil rights groups are expected to challenge DNA collection and household fingerprinting requirements if they are formalized in regulation. City councils and county boards are weighing whether to accept the administration’s incentives to work with ICE, while police chiefs assess the effect on community trust.

For now, the system is moving toward more enforcement with fewer safeguards. ICE’s new guidance frames certain children as “flight risk,” and its budget gives the agency the manpower to act on that designation. ORR can share sponsor data with immigration enforcement, a sea change that reaches straight into children’s homes. Legal aid remains precarious despite the court-ordered reprieve. And immigrant neighborhoods are adjusting to deeper police involvement as officers across jurisdictions join a broader federal push to track and detain unaccompanied minors. The underlying premise is that large numbers of children have gone missing in the system, yet the government’s own audit shows the problem is as much about paperwork and service of process as it is about absences. Whether the enforcement-first approach will bring children back into court—or keep them out of safe placements—will be tested in the coming year.

An official overview of the child welfare side of the system is available from the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, which transfers minors to sponsors and oversees their care while immigration cases proceed. But the enforcement shift now underway is largely being driven by ICE’s new funding and directives, with local police playing an expanding role. As one watchdog put it, ICE “was not able to account” for many children in the past; the question is whether more tracking, deeper vetting, and broader detention powers will fix those gaps—or deepen them.