TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Florida child welfare authorities turned over a 17-year-old foster child to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, sparking intense criticism that the action could hinder efforts to protect children in the state’s large immigrant communities.

The Honduran teen was removed from his Pensacola foster home Monday morning — in handcuffs and shackles – and transferred immediately into ICE custody. The boy and his mother had crossed the southwest border into the U.S. without permission, sources familiar with the case told the Miami Herald.

After being separated from his mother, who was later deported, the boy traveled from Texas to Pensacola, where he sought work. He entered foster care after he was found living in a shed with no source of food, shelter or income, records show. The boy, whose first name is Henry, also may have been a victim of labor trafficking. The Herald is not fully naming him to protect his privacy.

The decision to alert immigration authorities to Henry’s status as an undocumented migrant is at odds with decades of child welfare practice in Florida – and it appears to violate a 30-year-old state Department of Children and Families rule that prohibits workers from acting upon a child’s status.

Fran Allegra, a children’s attorney who ran Miami-Dade’s private foster care agency from 2004 until 2014, said if DCF’s action in Henry’s case represents a formal change in policy, it “puts Florida children at risk, and introduces a new chilling effect on reports to the (state’s) child abuse hotline. Reports about undocumented families are already low. This shift makes the chance for reporting, and, therefore, rescuing kids, less likely.”

State Sen. Ileana Garcia, a Miami Republican who has been openly critical of the Trump administration’s immigration policies after previously supporting them, spoke Monday about Henry’s plight after working behind the scenes to keep him within state care.

While declining to name the child, she told the Herald she is concerned his case may be part of a larger pattern in which children in the state’s foster care system could be picked up at the homes of their foster parents by federal immigration authorities. Lawyers told the Herald it’s been years since they heard about state child welfare agencies, like DCF, notifying ICE about children in their custody.

“Somehow they are collecting these records because they are going to their houses,” said Garcia, a co-founder of Latinas for Trump. “What really bothers me is that these are victims of human trafficking. You would think they would have more protections.”

In a post on social media, Garcia accused top Trump aide Stephen Miller of directing ICE to target minors in foster care in a “desperate” attempt to meet a “quota of deportations.” When asked by The Herald, she said she could provide specifics only about the Pensacola case.

DCF administrators did not respond on Tuesday to queries about the case or others from the Herald. An ICE spokesman had no immediate comment but said the agency would look into the matter.

Typically, unaccompanied children who are detained at the border are placed in the custody of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refuge Resettlement, which locates available relatives and suitable sponsors or places children in shelters. But Henry was detained by local authorities in Escambia County and placed in state care, instead.

Historically, ORR has been reluctant to take children who had been released from their care – or had never been in their custody – if they were already placed with a local or state agency. But experts told the Herald that has changed under the Trump administration, which they say has been apprehending kids already in the U.S. and putting them into ORR custody. As part of its crackdown, the administration also has cut funds for lawyers in kids’ immigration cases – and provided ICE access to a database about unaccompanied children.

Henry’s journey to the U.S.

Henry, whose father was deceased, crossed the border with his mother at age 13, both as undocumented migrants. The details of his first years in the U.S. are not completely clear but a source told the Herald he was initially released into the custody of an uncle. Multiple sources said both Henry and his mother had endured enormous trauma during the journey.

At some point, Henry moved in with his mother, but he did not remain there long. It appears Henry’s mother was arrested and jailed somewhere in Texas, and then deported back to Honduras. The teen found his way to Pensacola, where his brother lives, seeking employment. He found it, working for $10-per day. He “realized he was being overworked, and ran away,” records show. Henry may also have been “labor trafficked,” records say.

By the winter of 2024, Henry had been in Pensacola for several months. A report was made to DCF’s child welfare hotline in November alleging the teen, who was not yet 17, was homeless, and “did not have a caregiver available.” Henry was then placed with a local family, where he remained for 11 days before leaving after disagreements over a visitor and when he was supposed to sleep, records say.

Another hotline report followed on April 21: The month before, Henry had run away from Lutheran Services Florida Currie House, and he was not “welcome” to return, records say.

On March 28, DCF was told Henry was “staying in a shed and was homeless and may be a runaway and possibly labor trafficked.”

On April 24, DCF filed what’s called a “shelter petition,” asking an Escambia County child welfare judge to designate the teen a dependent of the state. Henry was placed in foster care, where he remained until this summer. On June 6, sources told the Herald, a DCF administrator reported Henry to ICE.

Three days later, Henry was taken from his foster home – in handcuffs and leg irons – by ICE agents, a source said.

The boy is now in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which handles cases of unaccompanied kids. ICE does not detain unaccompanied minors in its own facilities; they are generally housed by ORR. A source told the Miami Herald the teenager does not have a deportation order.

A policy shift?

The decision to report Henry to ICE appears to run counter to previous state policy.

In response to litigation, DCF passed a governing procedure in 1995 called the Undocumented Child Rule. The lawsuit had been filed in federal court by “Jane Doe,” a 14-year-old migrant from Haiti who had entered the U.S. in 1985 without permission. Collateral damage in a tug of war between Florida and federal immigration authorities, the girl was about to be tossed out of foster care.

Among other things, the rule requires the agency to screen and respond to child abuse hotline calls “without regard to the immigration status” of the child or family at the center of the report.

The rule states, in part: “No such status check or other contact shall be made for the purpose of seeking the child’s or the family’s detention by (immigration authorities) or the initiation or resumption of deportation or exclusion proceedings against the child or the child’s family, irrespective of the outcome of the dependency proceeding. No Department of Children and Family Services staff member may attempt to place any alien child in (immigration) custody.”

Robert Latham, associate director of the Children & Youth Law Clinic at the University of Miami School of Law, said DCF appears to have violated that rule by reporting Henry to ICE.

“Every administration since then has followed” the rule, he said. “If this is a policy decision, it is a huge deal.”

Latham said DCF keeps records of which children in state care are undocumented, partly because Medicaid, the state’s insurer of disabled and impoverished Floridians, will not pay for their health care. Most foster children are insured by Medicaid.

“It’s unconscionable of DCF to cooperate in a way that puts children at risk of harm,” Latham said Monday. “They are entrusted with caring for these children and should do everything they can to protect them.”

Fear of suppressed reports

One of Latham’s greatest fears – and that of other children’s advocates – is that immigrant communities will decline to report suspected child abuse or neglect for fear that child protection authorities will report a youngster’s immigration status to ICE. People who become aware of maltreatment may fear deportation more than they fear abuse.

“If people don’t report, DCF can’t respond, and children and families will be left at higher risk of harm.” Latham added: “I suspect that’s the point. The whole push over the past few months has been to destabilize immigrant communities. This seems like another way to do that.”

DCF’s action could discourage relatives, neighbors and others from seeking help from the state when they fear a child is in danger, said Ron Davidson, former director of Mental Health Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago who consulted with that state’s Department of Children and Family Services for more than 20 years.

“Florida and every other state must rely on the implicit trust of private citizens to come forward and report harm to children in the community. Whenever that basic trust is violated — as it appears in this case — then the risks of harm to children are dramatically increased,” Davidson said.

Florida has one of the largest populations of undocumented immigrants among the 50 states, according to Department of Homeland Security data. Estimates of Florida’s undocumented residents range from 590,000 to 1.02 million people. That includes nearly 165,000 undocumented children under 18, according to the Center for Migration Studies of New York.

“If DCF’s public policy changes from refugee care and resettlement … to deportation, our vulnerable migrant communities across the state will no longer look to DCF for help for abused, abandoned and neglected children,” said Allegra, who headed the Our Kids foster care agency for a decade.

She added: “These children will suffer more harm under this policy shift, and abuse will go unreported.”

_____

©2025 Miami Herald. Visit at miamiherald.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.