ProPublica: Deportations of Unaccompanied Immigrant Minors Have Tripled Under Trump

ProPublica’s July 6 investigation documents that deportations of unaccompanied immigrant minors have tripled under the Trump administration, with DHS now removing children who previously held protections under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA). The piece centers on Elder Chavez, an 18-year-old arrested at a Louisiana traffic stop and held at Winn Correctional Center, who crossed the border as an unaccompanied minor in 2022. It is the first systematic accounting of how the administration has dismantled William Wilberforce Act protections for the most vulnerable migrant population, sending some children to countries they have not lived in since early childhood.

This connects to the broader family-detention buildout the timeline already tracks through the LaSalle Rapides Parish family-detention contract (2026-07-01–ice-10k-arrest-surge-lasalle-family-detention-contract) and documents a distinct population-specific erosion of statutory protection running in parallel to the general enforcement surge — minors who had a specific legal shield now losing it through reinterpretation and administrative practice rather than legislative repeal.