Sponsors (44)
Introduced December 3, 2025 by Daniel Goldman · Last progress December 3, 2025
The bill increases protections, privacy, and financial relief for unaccompanied children and other immigrants—improving access to care and legal processes—while shifting costs and administrative burdens to federal budgets and agencies and narrowing some enforcement and screening tools, creating trade‑offs between humanitarian protections and enforcement/capacity concerns.
Unaccompanied children will get stronger legal protections, trafficking screening, and child-sensitive procedures (including emphasis on avoiding detention), reducing their risk of exploitation and health harms.
Immigrant children and former UACs will face lower costs to pursue protection and work authorization because asylum, EAD, court, SIJ, border-apprehension and related fees are eliminated and prior fees will be refunded, improving access to immigration relief and work legalities.
Prohibiting use of personal health and program data for immigration enforcement will increase trust in health and public‑health programs, encouraging care-seeking and improving public-health surveillance and outcomes.
Eliminating fees and issuing refunds will reduce fee revenue and create direct federal costs, potentially shifting the financial burden to taxpayers or requiring new appropriations.
Expanded protections, added screening obligations, and removal of fees may increase demand for adjudication and services, straining agency capacity and lengthening processing times unless Congress provides more resources.
Restrictions on information-sharing and limits on certain exams or data uses could reduce agencies' ability to identify security risks or immigration violations, potentially raising national‑security or public‑safety concerns in some cases.
Based on analysis of 7 sections of legislative text.
Exempts unaccompanied children from many immigration fees, repeals certain prior-law provisions (including body-exam rules), bars HHS data-sharing for enforcement, and requires refunds.
Creates broad fee exemptions and privacy limits for children who arrived to the U.S. as unaccompanied minors. It removes certain prior-law provisions related to body examinations and other rules, bars HHS from sharing examination information for immigration-enforcement purposes, and requires federal agencies to refund fees that were charged under repealed or amended provisions within 180 days of enactment. The bill focuses on reducing financial and privacy barriers for unaccompanied children and Special Immigrant Juvenile (SIJ) applicants by repealing a statutory SIJ fee, preventing DHS from charging specific immigration-related fees to this group, rescinding identified prior-law subsections about body exams, and mandating refunds for affected fees.