Sponsors (32)
Introduced January 3, 2025 by Andrew S. Biggs · Last progress January 3, 2025
The bill strengthens procedural protections and speeds care for some vulnerable children while simultaneously imposing much tougher asylum standards and expanding detention/return powers that make protection harder to obtain and increase risks of detention and expedited returns.
Unaccompanied and other immigrant children: faster placement and protection — children who do not meet safe-country criteria must be transferred to HHS within 30 days, be interviewed by officers trained in child‑trafficking interviews, and (when applicable) receive an immigration‑judge hearing within 14 days, improving timeliness of care, trafficking identification, and access to relief.
Immigration applicants: clearer, more reliable asylum procedures — asylum officers/adjudicators must follow standardized interview procedures and checklists, interviews are recorded and entered into the record, and independent competent interpreters are required, which should reduce inconsistent credibility findings and preserve evidence.
State and local placement oversight: improved information sharing — HHS must share identifying and placement information with DHS, increasing accountability and oversight of child welfare placements for immigrant minors.
Asylum seekers: substantially higher barriers and greater long‑term risks — the bill raises the credible‑fear screening standard to 'more probable than not,' shortens the asylum filing deadline from 1 year to 6 months, creates permanent ineligibility for INA benefits after a DHS/AG finding of a frivolous asylum claim, terminates asylum on return to the home country unless waived, and expands false
Children and families: greater likelihood of detention and reduced release options — treating children 'believed not to meet' criteria as not meeting them, removing a presumption against detention for non‑UAC children, prohibiting release of non‑UAC minors to sponsors other than a lawfully present parent/guardian, and requiring DHS to detain aliens charged with misdemeanor unlawful entry alongside
Immigrant children: risk of faster returns to unsafe countries — removing the contiguous‑country limitation for State Department repatriation negotiations allows agreements with any country, which could speed returns to places that may not be safe for some children.
Based on analysis of 4 sections of legislative text.
Tightens credible-fear and asylum standards, requires recorded child-focused interviews and faster hearings for many unaccompanied children, and mandates HHS–DHS info sharing and transfer timelines.
Makes major changes to how unaccompanied children and asylum seekers are processed at the border. It broadens the government’s repatriation and placement authority for unaccompanied alien children (UACs), requires child-specific interviewing and faster immigration-judge hearings for many children, mandates HHS information-sharing about sponsors/placements, and sets firm transfer deadlines. It also tightens credible-fear and asylum standards for expedited removal, requires recorded, quality-assured interviews with competent interpreters, and adds a provision that would terminate asylum for certain people who return to their country of origin. Implements operational requirements for DHS and HHS (training, checklists, recordings, timelines), changes who may be treated as removable, and creates new procedural safeguards and deadlines; several deadlines and applicability rules take effect on or after enactment. Some language in the provided summary is truncated and the final asylum-termination clause is not fully specified in the material provided.