Sponsors (45)
Introduced December 3, 2025 by Daniel Goldman · Last progress December 3, 2025
The bill increases protections, privacy safeguards, and financial relief for unaccompanied children and immigrants while shifting costs and administrative burdens to government and potentially limiting some enforcement and screening tools—trading increased humanitarian and public‑health protections for reduced operational flexibility and higher public expense.
Unaccompanied children (and their sponsors) will get stronger legal protections, trafficking screening, and child‑sensitive procedures that reduce exploitation and avoid harmful detention practices.
Unaccompanied children and former UACs will face lower financial barriers because asylum, EAD, court, border-apprehension, and SIJ fees are waived, improving access to protection and lawful work authorization.
Patients, providers, and public-health programs will be better protected from use of personal health or program data for immigration enforcement, increasing trust and participation in health services and surveillance.
Limits on information‑sharing and prohibitions on using health/program data for immigration enforcement could reduce agencies' ability to identify security risks or immigration violations, potentially affecting public safety and national security.
Eliminating fees, expanding safeguards, and processing refunds will shift costs to taxpayers and create new administrative expenses, potentially requiring more funding, staff, or reallocation of agency budgets.
Restrictions (on summary returns, information use, or statutory duties) and repeals could constrain DHS operational flexibility to manage large border influxes, create ambiguity in screening practices, and slow processing.
Based on analysis of 7 sections of legislative text.
Removes many immigration-related fees for unaccompanied children and SIJ applicants, repeals certain body-exam and data-sharing provisions, bars HHS data use for enforcement, and requires refunds.
Exempts unaccompanied children and Special Immigrant Juvenile (SIJ) applicants (and their parents/guardians) from a range of immigration-related fees, repeals certain provisions of a recent law that authorized intrusive medical/body examinations and broader information-sharing, and bars health-program data from being used for immigration enforcement. It also requires federal agencies to refund any fees already paid under the repealed or amended provisions within 180 days of enactment. The bill focuses on protecting vulnerable children by removing fee barriers to asylum, work authorization, immigration court filings, and SIJ filings; restricting the use of health and program information for enforcement purposes; and reversing specific prior-authority provisions that critics said increased risks of family separation and exploitation.