Sponsors (18)
Official title: Protect children affected by immigration enforcement actions, and for other purposes.
Introduced April 27, 2026 by Tina Smith · Last progress April 27, 2026
The bill substantially strengthens protections, communication, and accountability for parents and children in immigration enforcement—reducing trauma and promoting reunification—while imposing new costs, privacy risks, expanded discretion, and operational strains that could slow enforcement and produce uneven outcomes.
Children encountered in immigration enforcement (and their parents/caregivers) will face stronger child‑protection measures: officers receive trauma‑informed training, use‑of‑force and deceptive‑practice limits apply, and decisions must consider the child's best interests, reducing harmful separations and trauma.
Parents in custody can maintain contact and more easily arrange reunification: unlimited or frequent free phone/video calls and contact visits, help obtaining identity/travel documents, and provision of consular/legal contacts improve family communication and enable faster, safer placement or reunification.
Enforcement can be tailored to preserve family integrity: the bill encourages alternatives to detention, placement near a child's habitual residence, and delaying transfers until childcare is arranged so parents can continue caregiving when possible.
Taxpayers, DHS, and cooperating facilities will face significant new administrative and operational costs and burdens to implement data collection, notifications, language services, frequent communications, document facilitation, training, and placement‑near‑home requirements.
Collecting and publishing parental‑status and transfer/visit data raises privacy and data‑security risks for detained parents and their children if personally identifiable information is exposed or shared without strong protections.
The bill relies heavily on agency discretion and non‑binding guidance (e.g., Secretary's 'reason to believe', discretionary prioritization, case‑by‑case parole), which can produce inconsistent outcomes across regions and uncertainty for families.
Based on analysis of 11 sections of legislative text.
Requires DHS and cooperating entities to identify detained parents quickly, provide procedural protections and assistance, prioritize children’s best interests, and report data every 180 days.
Requires the Department of Homeland Security and any cooperating federal, state, or local entity to identify whether detained individuals are parents of children in the U.S., to document and update parental status quickly, and to provide a set of procedural protections and communications access for those parents. It directs DHS to prioritize children’s best interests in enforcement and detention decisions, create facility points of contact and a national coordinator to assist with family-court participation and travel/documentation, allow case-by-case parole for narrowly defined family reasons, mandate training for personnel who encounter detained parents, and require recurring public reporting of parental-status data and implementation steps starting 180 days after enactment.