Unaccompanied migrant children who cross the U.S. border are being held in federal custody for nearly four times as long under the current Trump administration compared to previous years, with New York City witnessing a dramatic decline in the number of minors being reunited with their families. According to a Gothamist analysis of federal data, the average stay for a child in detention has skyrocketed to 117 days, a sharp increase from the 30-day average maintained between 2021 and 2024. Immigration advocates and legal experts warn that the implementation of rigorous new verification requirements—including mandatory DNA testing, fingerprinting for all sponsors, and invasive home visits—has effectively created a bureaucratic “abyss” that traumatizes vulnerable youth and leaves parents in a state of perpetual uncertainty. In New York City alone, the number of children released to sponsors has plummeted by roughly 75%, with boroughs like Manhattan and the Bronx seeing even steeper declines of over 80%.
The shift in policy represents a stark departure from the previous administration, where parents could often regain custody by presenting a non-U.S. passport and a child’s birth certificate. Under the new guidelines, even biological parents are being subjected to exhaustive background checks and income verification processes that frequently see documentation expire before a decision is even reached. Attorneys at the Center for Family Representation note that these delays often force families to restart the entire application process from scratch. Meanwhile, the Office of Refugee Resettlement maintains that these protocols are designed to ensure child safety and weed out negligent sponsors, but critics argue the true intent is to prolong detention and discourage undocumented families from coming forward. The fear is palpable among potential sponsors, many of whom are themselves undocumented and must weigh the desire to rescue their children against the heightened risk of ICE enforcement and deportation.
The human cost of these systemic delays is exemplified by the harrowing case of a New York City mother who waited thirteen months to be reunited with her “tender age” son. After the boy was moved from a Texas facility to New York because of the emotional toll of their separation, the mother spent a year visiting him only once a week in a detention center, hoping in vain for a holiday release that never came. Even when reunification finally occurs, the ordeal often continues; the mother reported being summoned for a three-hour interrogation by Homeland Security Investigations shortly after her son’s release, which ultimately resulted in her being fitted with an ankle monitoring device. As children languish in congregate shelters for upward of 180 days, legal advocates report a growing sense of exhaustion among the youth, some of whom are now choosing “voluntary departure” and self-deporting to their countries of origin rather than continuing to fight a system that feels increasingly rigged against their freedom.
