If you’re trying to arrest an 18-year-old who has driven themselves to a federal immigration office for a standard check-in, it’s best not to alarm them.

“You pretend it’s a nice, casual interview,” one Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer told HuffPost recently.


“And you wait until the very last second, until the interview’s done, to let someone know that actually, they’re not allowed to leave, and they probably should call people about their car.”
---=
To the Trump administration, the “UAC” designation means two things: lots of information about where these young people are, and the ability to call them in to immigration offices without much fanfare.
---
Several attorneys told HuffPost that releases of children to sponsors have slowed to a trickle, if they happen at all.

At least one of those sponsors arrested recently was a pregnant woman who was detained at an in-person identification check, Scott Bassett, managing attorney with the Amica Center’s Children’s Program, told HuffPost. Bassett said he didn’t believe the woman had any criminal history or a removal order against her, so it wasn’t clear why she was arrested.

“This administration is determined to detain as many people as possible, as quickly as possible and sponsors represent an easy target since the government knows exactly how to find them,” Neha Desai, managing director for children’s human rights and dignity at the National Center for Youth Law, told HuffPost in an email.

“The government has placed family members – including parents – in a cruel and impossible position of ‘choosing’ whether they should come forward and risk being detained, or not come forward, knowing that the children will never be released to them,” she added.

HuffPost via Yahoo news