McAllen, Texas (AP) — For five months, a young father waited for his 3-year-old daughter’s release from federal custody as she crossed the U.S.-Mexico border with her mother, hoping for a delay for their safe reunion.
Only when he went to court as a last resort did he learn that the girl had allegedly been sexually abused in a foster home where she had been placed after being separated from her mother by immigration officials.
“She was there too long,” said her father, who is a legal permanent resident of the United States. “I think if they had moved faster, none of this would have happened.” She spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to prevent her daughter from being identified as a victim of sexual abuse.
President Donald Trump’s administration began targeting immigrant children in detention last year, like the man’s daughter, when it implemented new rules and procedures that dramatically increased detention times. The federal government has stepped up efforts to indefinitely extend family detention by proposing to end a cornerstone policy that ensures the safety of immigrant children in federal custody.
For months while the girl was in foster care, her father’s efforts at reunification stalled because the government told him he could not make an appointment to have her fingerprinted.
At the time, according to court documents, the girl said she was sexually abused by an older child who lived with her in foster care in Harlingen, Texas. A caregiver noticed the child’s underwear was behind, according to the lawsuit. The girl then told the caregiver that she had been molested several times and had bled. Officials with the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement told the father there had been an “accident” and that his daughter would be examined, he told the AP in an interview.
“I asked them, ‘What happened? I want to know. I’m her father. I want to know what’s going on,’ and they said they couldn’t give me more information, it was an investigation,” the father said.
The girl underwent forensic examination and interview. Although the father was not told of the outcome, the older child accused of abuse was removed from that foster care program, according to the lawsuit.
According to the case, the girl was forensically examined and interviewed. The abuse allegations were reported to local law enforcement, said Lauren Fisher Flores, an attorney representing the girl. The Associated Press typically does not name people who say they were sexually assaulted.
“To have your child abused while in the care of the government, not being able to understand what happened or how to protect them, not even being told about the abuse, is unimaginable,” Fisher Flores said. “Children deserve to be protected and they are with their parents.”
ORR and its parent agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, were named in the child’s lawsuit but did not respond to emails seeking comment.
The Trump administration changed release policies
The girl and her mother crossed the border illegally near El Paso on September 16 of last year. When his mother was accused of perjury and they were separated, the child was placed in the custody of ORR, which cares for immigrant children in shelter or foster care settings.
Children in ORR’s care are released to parents or sponsors who submit to a rigorous process that has become more comprehensive under the Trump administration.
Stricter regulations were imposed on the documentation required for sponsors, border agents began pushing unaccompanied children to self-deport before transferring them to shelters, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement began arresting some sponsors in the middle of the release process.
Legal advocates filed lawsuits challenging the policy changes, hoping to detain them longer.
The average detention time for children cared for by ORR increased from 37 days in January 2025 after Trump took office to nearly 200 days this February. Over the same period, the total number of children in ORR custody has fallen by almost half.
Lawyers are now turning to habeas petitions, which serve as emergency lawsuits, to expedite the release of children to their parents and sponsors.
Fisher Flores, legal director of the American Bar Association’s ProBar Project, said this year the organization has worked for an average of 225 days on eight habeas corpus petitions representing children in federal custody. They had not filed this type of petition for children before this Trump administration began.
Fisher Flores said the legal intervention helped the federal government respond to the father’s sponsorship application.
The alleged abuse was not immediately disclosed to the father
After months of delays, the lawyers wrote to the government in February asking them to allow the father to get an appointment for a fingerprint background check, a home visit and a DNA test. ORR then stalled again, offering no timeline on his expected release.
Attorneys filed a habeas petition in federal court and two days later, ORR released the girl to her father.
As lawyers prepared the lawsuit, the father realized it was an “accident” that officers had told him about the alleged sexual abuse.
“Increasingly, we must go to the federal courts to challenge these harmful legal violations and demand the release of the children,” Fisher Flores said.
The fingerprinting policy was challenged by legal advocates during the first Trump administration, including the National Center for Youth Law. Other nationwide lawsuits are protesting recent changes affecting the custody and care of immigrant children.
“This represents another version of family separation,” Neha Desai, managing director of the National Center for Child Human Rights and Youth Law, said of the 3-year-old girl’s case.
“A bipartisan Congress designed safeguards around the simple principle that children should be released quickly and safely to their families. This administration has consistently violated legal obligations to release children to their families, seriously endangering children’s health and well-being,” Desai added.
When the father was finally reunited with his daughter, he cried. Her daughter was also happy to see her.
But after five months in her custody, she began to notice changes: she had nightmares and became easily depressed. “He was never like that before”, said his father.
The couple now lives with the girl’s grandfather in Chicago while her case goes through immigration court.
