Exclusive: Dems Fire Back at Trump’s ‘Freaky’ Kid Self-Deportation Plan

It is both not as gross AND worse than you think.

(Photo By Paul Chinn/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)

THE CONGRESSIONAL HISPANIC CAUCUS (CHC) expressed grave concern Friday over reports that the Trump administration offered $2,500 payments to unaccompanied migrant kids in exchange for agreeing to self-deport voluntarily.

In a draft letter obtained by The Bulwark, scheduled to be sent after caucus members’ signatures were added, the CHC called the program illegal and framed it as downright predatory. I’m told the letter was nearing two dozen signers as of Friday morning.

“Recently-filed litigation shows that the agency simultaneously issued an internal directive instructing immigration agencies to transfer unaccompanied migrant children immediately into indefinite, adult immigration detention upon turning age 18,” the CHC letter, addressed to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and Attorney General Pam Bondi, states. “This directive not only violates a standing court order, but adds to the coercive nature of this financial offer of $2,500.”

The letter comes a week after NBC News reported on a memo from the Kennedy-led Health and Human Services department calling on migrant children 14 years and older to leave the country in exchange for $2,500. The memo, which was sent to legal-service providers who represent the young teens, stated that the Department of Homeland Security had already identified unaccompanied children in custody who would self-deport.

The news quickly ricocheted among already-panicked immigrant communities. Social media posts referred to it as “Operation Freaky Friday,” a nod to the movie in which a kid is treated like an adult. DHS sought to downplay the fears, saying in a tweet last Friday that it was “a strictly voluntary option” for trafficked children “to return home to their families.” But that did not assuage critics, and the Freaky Friday moniker picked up steam, including in the media.

The CHC letter is just the latest expression of concern about the Freaky Friday reports. Several other groups, including AfghanEvac, the Chamberlain Network, and Refugee Council USA, have also issued statements or published open letters. They, like the CHC, expressed a mix of disgust and shock at the effort, which they say targets vulnerable children and could involve coercing kids as young as 10.

“We are concerned by messaging from the Department of Homeland Security that suggests children who were trafficked against their will into the US by cartels will be part of an incentive program aimed at getting children to waive their legal rights under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act,” Shaina Aber, executive director of the Acacia Center for Justice, a human rights nonprofit that fights for the legal defense of immigrants, said in a statement. “DHS’s message is confusing and seems to fly in the face of established laws and protocols that Congress passed to protect children from cyclical trafficking risks, signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2008.”

Aber said kids who have survived severe forms of human trafficking should have their rights protected, be given a child advocate who looks out for their best interests, and receive assistance from trauma-informed legal services personnel.

But advocating for the rights of immigrant children is a tall order in the second Trump administration. And there is little to no indication that the Trump administration will back off the new program. There were anecdotal reports this week of ICE offering minors in school detention “money to return to their home country.”

The CHC, like congressional Democrats writ large, has limited ability to push back against this. Making a stink publicly is one of the few tools at the caucus’s disposal. In its letter, the CHC members said that the use of taxpayer dollars to incentivize self-deportation by unaccompanied children represents a “profound abuse of power.” The letter also called the effort a violation of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, which ensures that unaccompanied minors are treated humanely and that any decision to return them to their home country is truly voluntary and informed.

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Dems Creating a Paper Trail of Trump’s Illegal Actions

IT’S UNDERSTANDABLE if you’re skeptical that caucus letters and public statements can truly accomplish anything substantive. (This is a sentiment I’ve often heard from our Bulwark readers.)

But Democrats and advocates said the goal is not just to publicize concerns and complaints. It’s to establish a form of official pushback that can serve as a foundation for oversight authority. The Trump administration has fought back hard when Democrats used oversight authority to show up at detention centers unannounced, with agents responding with violence in some cases. But these actions have put a spotlight on the administration’s efforts to ram through deportations—and, arguably, helped move public opinion.

What’s more, the letters and statements help create a record of Trump administration abuses that will matter should Democrats win back the House in the 2026 midterms. Rep. Robert Garcia, a CHC member, is the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, in line to become chairman with the power to launch investigations into the administration.

“We’re laying the groundwork for a Democratic congressional takeover,” a congressional aide told me. “Of course you get tired of writing letters politely urging people that won’t read this shit. But if we get back in power, even in the House, and we don’t have these letters, we don’t have the material to start investigations, so we’re starting a paper trail.”

Todd Schulte, the president of FWD.us, an immigration advocacy group, told me there is a lot of truth to the idea that Americans didn’t like what President Biden was doing concerning the border, and were willing to elect Donald Trump as an antidote to it. But, he added, many of those same Americans are now looking at the reality of the Trump administration—the ICE thuggery, the violent raids hunting for migrants, the arrests in courthouses and off the street, the deportations to foreign prisons, and now these attempts to get children to self-deport—and saying this is not what they signed up for.

“People don’t like the idea of doing these things to kids,” he said. “Over and over again this administration thinks there is support for the idea that we as a country can do this to children and they’re 80/20 issues, from family separation to Dreamers. The idea that we’re going to incarcerate and deport kids, I find it hard to believe there are a lot of people supporting that.”