At nearly 1,000 pages long, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (OBBBA) signed into law by President Donald Trump on July 4 is so gargantuan and so far-reaching that its impact is difficult to envision.

A new report from the National Immigration Law Center (NILC), an advocacy group with offices in California and Washington, D.C., sifts through the noise to offer an interpretation of how the bill will affect U.S. immigration policy.

“OBBBA’s changes to federal immigration and benefits law will destabilize communities for generations,” the report says, adding that the legislation “is particularly vicious towards children.”

“In addition to the life-long scars children will endure from the family detention centers built with OBBBA funds, the law includes several policy measures that are effective immediately and undermine due process for migrant children and/or target them for harm,” it states.

Here’s a look at seven ways the NILC believes this legislation will directly impact immigrant children.

1. It authorizes a dramatic expansion of family detention.

The law immediately allocates $45 billion to the DHS to expand immigrant detention, more than quadrupling ICE’s annual detention budget. It “explicitly approves” the use of these funds for family detention and “proactively allows” for the indefinite detention of children and families, the NILC says. This appears to be in violation of the long-standing Flores Settlement Agreement, which set minimum standards for the care of children in immigration custody, including limits on how long they may be detained.  

2. It includes provisions that may leave young children vulnerable to state-sponsored physical abuse.

Two separate provisions fund government officials to conduct intrusive physical exams on children arriving at the border without a parent or legal guardian, ostensibly to search for gang-related tattoos or markings, according to the NILC. One of them calls for such exams without any age restrictions.

3. It creates new barriers to family sponsorship for unaccompanied children.

The law funds “extreme vetting measures” for those who wish to sponsor such children and all the potential sponsor’s household members, which could delay or deter people from stepping into the role. “Such intrusive measures without any guardrails against information sharing for enforcement purposes have proven to chill sponsors’ willingness to come forward for fear of detention and deportation, leaving children to languish in government custody,” the report explains.

4. It permits officials to pressure children of any age arriving at the border into agreeing to their own immediate deportation, without access to a lawyer or a day in court.

This, the report says, is “directly at odds with long-standing legal protections that provide at least some additional due process for children who may be unable to articulate the trafficking or abuse they have fled.”

5. It introduces a new fee for children seeking humanitarian protection, an additional barrier unaffordable to many.

Children who have been abused, abandoned or neglected by a parent now must pay a new minimum fee of $250 to apply for Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS).

6. It strips millions of children with immigrant parents of the anti-poverty benefits of the Child Tax Credit.

As the report notes, “the Child Tax Credit has been shown to lead to dramatic reductions in child poverty, supporting better educational, emotional, and health outcomes for children.” But under the new law, it will be offered only to families in which at least one spouse files tax returns with a current Social Security Number valid for work purposes. (Immigrants in the U.S. without it pay regular taxes using an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number.) Citing the Brookings Institution, the report estimates that some 2.6 million or more children will be affected.

7. It revokes eligibility for key federal health and nutrition benefit programs for many categories of lawfully present immigrant children who were previously eligible.

The children of refugees, people granted asylum, survivors of trafficking with a pending or approved T visa, and many other categories of people legally living in the U.S. have been stripped of access to programs like SNAP food assistance (effective immediately) and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (starting Oct. 1, 2026).

The effects of these measures directed at immigrant children will not impact this vulnerable group alone, the NILC concludes. “Between these policies and the law’s overall cuts to health care and food assistance for everyone, OBBBA will plunge low-income communities nationwide into crisis while putting the U.S. economy at risk.”

Beryl Flom, Chair of Immigration & Deportation Committee, LWV San Diego