[LWVNM Action] immigration] How the BBB Affects Children

Wed Jul 30 10:16:00 MDT 2025

Every day we are seeing more cruelty from this administration.

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Beryl Flom <berylflom at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Jul 30, 2025 at 9:55 AM
Subject: [immigration] How the BBB Affects Children
To: LWVUS Immigration Discussion Group <
lwvus-immigration-discussion-group at googlegroups.com>

This is from Documented, 7/30/2025
*Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill ‘Particularly Vicious’ to Immigrant Children,
Advocacy Group Says*

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
<https://documentedny.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=238f84238fa4ba5b6b37f3340&id=1c789dff4f&e=bbefd47dd1>
from
the National Immigration Law Center (NILC)
<https://documentedny.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=238f84238fa4ba5b6b37f3340&id=26d7ad8f71&e=bbefd47dd1>,
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
<https://documentedny.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=238f84238fa4ba5b6b37f3340&id=4e29593a74&e=bbefd47dd1>,
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
<https://documentedny.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=238f84238fa4ba5b6b37f3340&id=e66d7110d0&e=bbefd47dd1>
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*
<https://documentedny.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=238f84238fa4ba5b6b37f3340&id=5c00f36444&e=bbefd47dd1>

*.*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
<https://documentedny.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=238f84238fa4ba5b6b37f3340&id=e2e23c549e&e=bbefd47dd1>,
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

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