Legal advocates filed a motion Tuesday seeking to stop U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents from urging immigrant children entering the country without their parents to voluntarily deport themselves under a federal policy introduced last year.
Border agents who arrest unaccompanied immigrant children who enter the country illegally are required by the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 to send them to a federal shelter under a different agency, the Office of Refugee Resettlement. At the shelters, children have access to attorneys and an immigration judge, and they can talk to their parents over the phone before they agree to self-deport or seek other options.
