2026年11月2日 美国东部时间凌晨5:00 KFF健康新闻
今年夏天的一个早晨，来自萨尔瓦多的9岁女孩在休斯顿地区一家移民儿童收容所里翻找彩色马克笔，给妈妈写了一封信。
“我好想马上就和你在一起，”小女孩M.R.用拼写错误、没有标点的西班牙语写道，旁边画了爱心、一道彩虹，还有被粉色和蓝色圆点环绕的大大的“我爱你”。“我很想你，妈妈，我超爱你，妈妈，我想和你在一起。”
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这是一名儿童被关押在政府运营的收容所期间给母亲写的便条。 亚历克莎·森杜卡斯/加尔维斯顿-休斯顿移民代表项目
这名儿童的代理律师表示，女孩曾苦苦哀求离开她已被关押七个多月的这家政府收容所。她变得情绪崩溃，在电话里告诉妈妈，自己感到悲伤又孤独，极度渴望一个拥抱，还流鼻血，以为自己得了感染。
与此同时，她的母亲卡门在争取监护权的过程中，却被联邦移民官员逮捕，送往路易斯安那州的一所移民拘留中心——尽管她拥有未决的庇护申请，且没有犯罪记录。
“我们俩都被困住了，”卡门在9月接受拘留中心采访时表示，“她只是个无助的小女孩。这程序不应该是这样的。”
KFF健康新闻仅使用母亲的名字和女儿的首字母缩写，因为她们担心分享经历会遭到政府报复。
截至9月，这名9岁女童是被卫生与公众服务部难民安置办公室管辖的收容所关押的近1900名儿童之一，该办公室十余年前受国会委托照料无人陪伴儿童，职责是将他们的照料与移民执法工作分开。
然而，第二届特朗普政府已调整了难民安置办公室的职能，使其服务于自身的驱逐行动。通过对多个家庭、律师和儿童权益倡导者的采访，以及法庭文件审查，结果显示此举包括关押儿童而非将他们与美国境内的家人团聚，且常利用儿童来诱捕其家庭成员。该办公室照料的许多儿童都逃离了本国的暴力或虐待。
前联邦卫生官员乔纳森·怀特表示，难民安置办公室此前曾试图优先保障被照料儿童的福祉，他在特朗普总统第一任期的部分时间里负责该办公室的无人陪伴儿童项目。法律要求该办公室将儿童安置在“限制最少的环境”中，并“毫不拖延地”释放，通常是释放给经过审查的愿意照料他们的父母或其他亲属。
现任持牌临床社会工作者怀特表示，如今该办公室监护下的儿童已成为政府推进更大移民政策目标的附带损害。他说，政府正刻意将全国无人陪伴未成年收容系统从儿童福利项目改造为驱逐移民的拘留项目。
律师称，尽管目前被关押在该办公室收容所的儿童比过去几年少，但剩下的儿童往往发现自己被困数月，除了进入长期寄养家庭或返回他们逃离的危险处境外，看不到其他出路。这是因为他们可能的监护人自己也被拘留，或因害怕、无法完成担保流程而无法照料孩子。律师常表示，即便满足担保要求，该办公室仍拒绝释放儿童，他们必须起诉才能让孩子获释。
美国众议员安德烈·萨利纳斯（俄勒冈州民主党籍）在10月1日的新闻发布会上呼吁关注政府对无人陪伴儿童项目的修改，她说：“当儿童看不到任何离开拘留所的出路时，自愿离境可能就不再是真正的选择了。”
国土安全部未直接回答KFF健康新闻提出的问题，但表示移民与海关执法局对儿童担保人的拘留是为了防止儿童受到伤害。2024年一名联邦监察员发现，在乔·拜登总统任期内无人陪伴儿童数量激增期间，难民安置办公室未对担保人进行适当审查，且新闻报道记录了该机构释放儿童后被剥削的事件。
国土安全部在一份未署名的电子邮件中重申了此前的声明，称“移民与海关执法局不会拆散家庭”，并表示政府正在寻找拜登任期内到来的45万名无人陪伴儿童。该邮件称，许多儿童被安置在未审查的担保人手中，这些人是走私者和性贩子，这一说法存在争议。它提供了16起担保人因严重犯罪被捕的案例，包括强奸一名无人陪伴儿童、贩毒和凶杀。
KFF健康新闻也就该案件及难民安置办公室对无人陪伴未成年人的待遇向卫生与公众服务部提问。该机构未予回应。
从儿童福利到拘留所
案件文件显示，去年年底，M.R.和姐姐历经约两周前往美国，蹚过里奥格兰德河后，在得克萨斯州被边境巡逻人员拘留。姐妹俩希望投奔几年前逃离萨尔瓦多、现居田纳西州的母亲和哥哥。卡门表示，黑帮成员杀害了M.R.的父亲、叔叔和怀孕的堂兄，她也担心女儿的安全。M.R.后来告诉一名社工，她在萨尔瓦多的外祖母照顾她和姐姐时，用皮带和巴掌打她们。
像其他独自抵达美国且无合法身份的人一样，女孩和姐姐抵达收容所时以为几天就能离开。在特朗普第二任期之前，儿童通常在难民安置办公室的监护下等待约一个月，期间联邦官员审查他们的亲属或其他担保人。M.R.的哥哥2024年抵达美国，他在收容所待了11天。
第二届特朗普政府正在逮捕前来解救儿童的父母和其他可信赖照料者，为担保人设置苛刻的新要求，并任命一名有执法经验的前移民官员担任难民安置办公室负责人。儿童平均滞留时间延长至近六个月，有些人像M.R.一样滞留更久，即便他们有符合资格的担保人。
移民辩护法律中心的阿尔瓦罗·韦尔塔在7月的新闻简报中表示，一名3岁儿童在难民安置办公室的监护下滞留了300天。他说，一名6岁女孩的父亲在接受担保人审查期间被拘留并被驱逐后，她在监护下待了七个月。3月母亲前往见女儿的预约时，两人被一同送往得克萨斯州迪利的一所移民拘留中心，该中心受到民主党议员、倡导者和家庭的批评，他们称其条件不人道。
移民律师表示，政府在加快驱逐的同时，削弱了对移民儿童的法律保护。由于政府破坏法律服务，包括1岁儿童在内的儿童正独自出现在移民法官面前。
在某些情况下，移民官员将已安置在担保人处、并已在社区生活的儿童拘留。政府还向包括M.R.在内的儿童提供至少2500美元的报酬，若他们同意返回祖国。
M.R.的姐姐在抵达三周后满18岁时获释。法院阻止了特朗普政府将在难民安置办公室监护下年满18岁的人转移至移民拘留所的企图。这让小M.R.独自留在了新国家，身边没有母亲、双胞胎哥哥姐姐或其他近亲。
家庭分离
4月，卡门前往做DNA检测，她被告知这是确保女儿获释的最后一步。KFF健康新闻审查了一条确认国土安全部办公室预约的短信。她以为很快就能与小女儿团聚。当时她已提交了税单和薪资信息、完成了指纹采集，社工也上门家访过。她和十几岁的孩子为小女儿布置了卧室，装饰上凯蒂猫床单、《冰雪奇缘》窗帘，还有能在天花板投射星星和宇航员的台灯。他们在视频通话中给M.R.看了房间。哥哥说，她很兴奋。
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母亲和十几岁的孩子为小女儿布置了带有凯蒂猫床单和《冰雪奇缘》窗帘的卧室，期待她很快从联邦移民拘留所获释。家庭照片
移民官员未经许可就在预约时逮捕了卡门。随后难民安置办公室以此次逮捕为由拒绝了她的担保人申请。
女孩崩溃了。
“她不明白为什么自己被困在这里，为什么政府要逮捕她的母亲而不是让她们团聚，”代表这名女孩的加尔维斯顿-休斯顿移民代表项目执行律师亚历克莎·森杜卡斯说，“我们的政府彻底辜负了他们，对待他们的方式是任何人都不该承受的。”
国土安全部未就卡门及其女儿案件的描述发表评论。该机构表示，只有在提供相关人员的姓名、出生日期和非公民识别号码时才能发表评论。
“当媒体拒绝提供姓名时，我们无法提供特定案件的细节，甚至无法核实任何事件是否发生、这些人是否存在。如果你不能履行职责，我们也无法履行我们的，”该机构新闻办公室回应道，未按要求提供发言人姓名。
休斯顿地区收容所的记录显示，女孩接受了心理咨询。她未被诊断出任何精神健康状况，但治疗师报告她神情悲伤，谈及漫长的收容所生活和想念母亲时会哭泣。
卡门每周约给女儿打三次电话，她说孩子状态不佳。森杜卡斯表示，女孩责怪自己。
每次通话，M.R.都会问妈妈什么时候能获释、什么时候能团聚。妈妈说，女孩抱怨自己不舒服，还遗憾没人能给她一个拥抱、安慰她，尽管她收到了所有坏消息。
“我觉得自己是世界上最糟糕的母亲，因为我无法向女儿解释发生了什么、他们对我做了什么，”卡门说。
怀特表示，M.R.这类情况表明难民安置办公室已转向优先移民执法而非儿童福祉。
“任何情况下，告诉孩子要将其释放给母亲、为此做准备，然后又以计划中的团聚为借口逮捕母亲，都不符合儿童的最大利益，”他说。
美国儿科学会的一组医生曾在过去一年里视察多家移民儿童收容所，其中的苏拉勒·沙阿表示，许多儿童因长期被关押在收容所而患上精神疾病。
“这令人心碎，”沙阿说，并补充称，孩子们出现焦虑、抑郁和应激障碍，导致发育倒退、行为失控和自残。一些孩子尿床、出现胸痛，或夜间哭喊。她还说，在收容所待数月会产生长期健康影响，如创伤后应激障碍。
移民辩护法律中心的法律事务主管米奇·多诺万-卡卢斯特表示，一些情绪崩溃的儿童还曾尝试自杀。
一对来自委内瑞拉的十几岁兄弟姐妹，在得克萨斯州另一所不同的联邦收容所待了一年多，他们告诉KFF健康新闻，在住宿期间，他们几乎从未离开过大楼，必须遵守严格的作息。他们说，收容所的学术课程每月重复，饮食每周都一样。他们还抱怨因大笑太大声或打水仗等小事被训斥。
女孩说，父亲在担保人申请过程中被拘留后，她连续几天没吃东西。她出现了创伤后应激障碍症状。
男孩表示，这段经历让他的身心都受到了煎熬。
“我那时是个崩溃的孩子，”他说，“坏消息来的时候我不知道该笑还是该哭。”
痛苦的选择
在拘留所，卡门收到了驱逐令，面临着难以想象的选择：要么把小女儿留在长期寄养家庭，要么和女儿一起回到萨尔瓦多可能存在危险的处境，把十几岁的孩子留在美国。卡门说，尽管该国的帮派暴力有所减少，但杀害她家人、威胁要杀她的人仍在她以前的社区活动。
儿童权益非营利组织“困境儿童”的全球政策与倡导主管珍妮弗·波德库尔表示，这是全美移民家庭每天面临的那种选择。
7月，卡门决定无法再承受小女儿的情绪崩溃。她们申请一起离开。
森杜卡斯表示，母亲本可以对驱逐令提起上诉，但她担心会对女儿的心理健康造成影响。卡门说，女儿告诉她：“我不想再像圣诞节、母亲节和你生日那样感到孤单了。那些日子我都好孤单。我不想再这样下去了。”
9月中旬，在10岁生日前三周、抵达美国281天后，女儿被送往萨尔瓦多与母亲团聚。
孩子的哥哥姐姐仍在美国，继续申请庇护，无法与母亲团聚。哥哥退学了，和双胞胎姐姐一起搬去和一位亲戚住。
“我只希望其他人明白，我们都在为某件事奋斗，”他说，“我们的奋斗是为了团聚，这不是件会伤害任何人的事。”
贾兹敏·奥罗斯科·罗德里格斯为此报道做出了贡献。
_KFF健康新闻_是一家专注于制作健康问题深度报道的全国性新闻编辑室，是_KFF_——独立健康政策研究、民意调查和新闻机构的核心运营项目之一。
Stuck in shelters, some migrant children abandon hopes of staying in U.S.
November 2, 2026 / 5:00 AM EST / KFF Health News
One morning this summer, a 9-year-old girl from El Salvador picked through colorful markers at a Houston-area shelter for migrant children and crafted a letter to her mom.
“I want to be with you already,” the little girl, M.R., wrote in misspelled, unpunctuated Spanish, adding hearts, a rainbow, and a large “I love you” surrounded by pink and blue dots. “I miss you a lot, mami I love you a lot mami I want to be with you.”
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A girl’s note to her mother while the child was held at a government-run shelter. Alexa Sendukas/Galveston-Houston Immigrant Representation Project
The girl had begged to leave the government-run shelter where she had been held for more than seven months, an attorney for the child said. She’d become distraught, telling her mom on the phone that she felt sad and lonely, that she desperately wanted a hug, that she was getting nosebleeds and thought she had an infection.
Meanwhile, as her mother, Carmen, was going through the process to regain custody, federal immigration officials instead arrested her, sending her to a Louisiana detention center though she had a pending asylum case and no criminal record.
“Both of us are trapped,” Carmen said in a September interview from the detention center. “She’s just a helpless little girl. The process shouldn’t be like this.”
KFF Health News is using only the mother’s first name and daughter’s initials, because they fear government reprisal for sharing their story.
As of September, the 9-year-old was among almost 1,900 children being held at shelters overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement, which was tasked by Congress over a decade ago with looking after unaccompanied children to separate their care from immigration enforcement.
Instead, the second Trump administration has reconfigured the resettlement office to aid its deportation campaign. This includes holding children rather than reuniting them with family in the United States, and often using them to ensnare family members, according to interviews with families, lawyers, and child advocates, as well as reviews of court documents. Many children in the office’s care are fleeing violence or abuse in their home countries.
Previously, the resettlement office attempted to prioritize the well-being of children in its care, said Jonathan White, a former federal health official who ran the office’s unaccompanied children program for part of President Trump’s first term. The office is legally required to place children “in the least restrictive setting” and release them “without unnecessary delay,” usually to a vetted parent or other family member who is willing to care for them.
Now children in the office’s custody have become collateral damage as the administration seeks to advance its larger immigration policy goals, said White, a licensed clinical social worker. He said the administration is deliberately reshaping the nation’s shelter system for unaccompanied minors from a child welfare program into a detention program that encourages immigrants to leave the country.
Although fewer kids are now held in the office’s shelters than in past years, those who remain often find themselves trapped for months with no clear way out other than to enter long-term foster care or return to the dangerous conditions they fled, attorneys said. That’s because their potential guardians get detained themselves or are afraid or unable to complete the sponsorship process. Often, attorneys said, the office refuses to release the children even when sponsorship requirements are met, and they have to sue for the kids’ release.
“When a child sees no way out of detention, voluntary departure may no longer feel like a real choice,” U.S. Rep. Andrea Salinas (D-Ore.) said during an Oct. 1 news conference calling attention to the administration’s changes to the unaccompanied children program.
The Department of Homeland Security did not directly answer questions sent by KFF Health News but framed detentions of migrant children’s sponsors by Immigration and Customs Enforcement as part of an effort to prevent kids from being harmed. A federal watchdog in 2024 found that the resettlement office didn’t properly screen sponsors amid a surge of unaccompanied children during President Joe Biden’s term, and news reports have documented incidents of children being exploited after their release from the agency’s custody.
In an unsigned email, DHS reiterated previous statements that “ICE does not separate families” and that the administration is working to locate 450,000 unaccompanied children that came during the Biden administration. It said many of the children were placed with unvetted sponsors who were smugglers and sex traffickers, a claim that has been disputed. It provided a list of 16 cases in which sponsors were arrested in connection with serious crimes, including the rape of an unaccompanied child, drug trafficking, and homicide.
KFF Health News also sent questions to HHS about the case and the resettlement office’s treatment of unaccompanied minors. The agency did not respond.
From child welfare to detention
M.R. spent about two weeks traveling to the U.S. late last year with her older sister, wading across the Rio Grande before being detained by Border Patrol officers in Texas, according to case documents. The sisters hoped to join their mother and a brother who had fled El Salvador a few years earlier and were living in Tennessee. Gang members murdered M.R.’s father, her uncle, and a pregnant cousin, according to Carmen, who feared for her daughter’s safety, too. M.R.’s maternal grandmother in El Salvador hit her and her sister with a belt and open hand while caring for them, M.R. later told a social worker.
Like others arriving in the U.S. alone and without legal status, the girl and her older sister landed in a shelter thinking they would be out in days. Before Mr. Trump’s second term, children typically waited in the resettlement office’s custody for about a month while federal officials screened their relatives or other sponsors. M.R.’s brother, who arrived in the U.S. in 2024, said he stayed in a shelter for 11 days.
The second Trump administration is arresting parents and other trusted caregivers who have come forward to get children released, has created onerous new requirements for sponsors, and has installed a former immigration official with experience in law enforcement as the head of the resettlement office. Average stays stretched to nearly six months, with some like M.R. staying much longer, even when they have qualified sponsors.
Alvaro Huerta of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center said during a July news briefing that a 3-year-old remained in the resettlement office’s custody for 300 days. A 6-year-old girl remained in custody for seven months, Huerta said, after her father was detained while being vetted as a sponsor and then deported. When the mother arrived at an appointment in March to reunite with the girl, he said, they were sent together to an immigration detention center in Dilley, Texas, that has drawn criticism from Democratic lawmakers, advocates, and families who have reported inhumane conditions.
Immigration lawyers say the administration has undermined legal protections for migrant kids while simultaneously fast-tracking deportation. Children, including some as young as 1, are appearing before immigration judges alone because of administration disruptions to legal services.
In some cases, immigration officials are detaining kids after they have been placed with sponsors and are already living in their communities. The administration has also offered children, including M.R., payments of at least $2,500 if they agree to return to their home countries voluntarily.
M.R.’s sister was released when she turned 18, three weeks after her arrival. Courts have blocked the Trump administration’s attempts to transfer to immigration detention people who turn 18 while in the resettlement office’s custody. That left young M.R. on her own in a new country, without her mom, her twin older siblings, or other close family.
Family separation
In April, Carmen went to a DNA test appointment, which she was told was the last step she needed to secure her daughter’s release. KFF Health News reviewed a text confirming the appointment at a DHS office. She thought she would soon be reunited with her youngest child. By then she had already presented her tax and salary information, submitted fingerprints, and been visited at home by a social worker. She and her teens prepared the little girl’s bedroom, adorning it with a Hello Kitty bed cover, “Frozen” curtains, and a lamp that projects stars and astronauts on the ceiling. They showed it to M.R. on a video call. She was excited, her brother said.
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A mother and her teens had prepared her youngest daughter’s room with a Hello Kitty bed cover and “Frozen” curtains, expecting her to soon be released from federal immigration custody. Family photo
Without a warrant, immigration officers detained Carmen at the appointment. The resettlement office subsequently rejected her sponsorship application, citing the detention it had helped facilitate.
The girl was crushed.
“She doesn’t have an understanding of why she’s stuck there and why the government would detain her mom instead of reuniting them,” said Alexa Sendukas, managing attorney with the Galveston-Houston Immigrant Representation Project, which is representing the girl. “Our government has completely failed them and has treated them in a way no human being should ever be treated.”
DHS declined to comment on a description of the case of Carmen and her daughter. The agency said it could comment only if it had the names, dates of birth, and noncitizen identification numbers of the people involved.
“When the media refuses to give names, it makes it impossible to provide details on specific cases or even verify any of this even happened or that the people even exist. If you can’t do your job, we can’t do ours,” the agency’s press office responded, without providing the name of a spokesperson as requested.
Reports from the Houston-area shelter show that the girl received counseling. She was not diagnosed with any mental health conditions, though the therapist reported she was sad and cried while discussing her long shelter stay and missing her mom.
Carmen, who talked to her daughter on the phone about three times a week, said the child was struggling. The girl blamed herself, Sendukas said.
Every phone call, M.R. would ask her mom when she’d be released and when they’d be together again. She complained of feeling unwell. She lamented having no one to hug or comfort her, despite all the bad news she’d received, her mom said.
“I felt like the worst mother in the world, because I couldn’t explain to my daughter what was happening, what they’d done to me,” Carmen said.
Situations like M.R.’s are indicative of the resettlement office’s shift to prioritizing immigration enforcement over children’s well-being, White said.
“There is no scenario ever where it’s in the best interest of the child to tell them you’re going to release them to their mom, and prepare them for that, and then use their planned unification as a pretext to apprehend the mom,” he said.
Sural Shah, part of a team of physicians with the American Academy of Pediatrics who have visited several shelters for migrant children over the past year, said many are developing mental illnesses due to prolonged shelter stays.
“It’s heartbreaking,” Shah said, adding that kids are exhibiting anxiety, depression, and stress disorders, leading them to regress developmentally, act out, and harm themselves. Some wet their beds, experience chest pains, or cry out at night. Being stuck in a shelter for months can have long-term health effects like post-traumatic stress disorder, she added.
Some distressed children have also attempted suicide, said Mickey Donovan-Kaloust, legal services director at the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, which has offices across Southern California.
A teenage brother and sister from Venezuela who spent more than a year in a different federal shelter in Texas told KFF Health News that during their stay, they barely left the building and had to follow a rigid routine. The academic lessons they received at the shelter repeated every month, they said, and meals were the same each week. They also complained that they got reprimanded for small things like laughing too loud or having water fights.
When their father was detained during his sponsorship process, the girl stopped eating for days, she said. She showed symptoms of PTSD.
The boy said the experience wore him down mentally and emotionally.
“I was a broken kid,” he said. “I didn’t know whether to laugh when I got bad news, I didn’t know whether to cry.”
An excruciating choice
In detention, Carmen received a deportation order and faced an unthinkable choice: leave her youngest child behind in long-term foster care or return to potentially deadly conditions in El Salvador together, leaving her teens in the United States. Although gang violence is down in the country, Carmen said the people who killed her family members and threatened to kill her are still active in her old neighborhood.
It’s the kind of choice that immigrant families across the country are facing daily, said Jennifer Podkul, chief of global policy and advocacy at Kids in Need of Defense, a nonprofit that represents kids in Office of Refugee Resettlement custody.
In July, Carmen decided she could no longer bear her youngest daughter’s distress. They asked to leave together.
The mom could have appealed her deportation order but was worried about the mental health toll, Sendukas said. Carmen said her daughter told her: “I don’t want to feel alone again like I did at Christmas, like I did on Mother’s Day, and for your birthday. All of those days I’ve felt so alone. I don’t want to go on like this.”
In mid-September, three weeks before her 10th birthday and 281 days after she arrived in the U.S., the daughter was sent with her mother to El Salvador.
The child’s older siblings remain in the U.S. fighting their own asylum cases without their mother. The brother dropped out of high school in Tennessee and, along with his twin sister, moved to live with a relative.
“I just hope other people understand that we’re all fighting for something,” he said. “We were fighting to be together. It wasn’t a dream that hurt anyone.”
Jazmin Orozco Rodriguez contributed to this report.
_KFF Health News_is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at_KFF_— the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism._