In recent weeks, a flurry of new immigration enforcement initiatives from the Trump administration has sparked fierce debate and drawn sharp criticism from advocates, politicians, and community leaders across the United States. At the heart of the controversy is a government plan, revealed through a contracting document posted on November 5, 2025, by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), to establish a national call center dedicated to tracking unaccompanied immigrant children and coordinating with local and state law enforcement agencies.
The proposed call center, which would begin initial operations in the greater Nashville area by March 2026 before ramping up to full capacity in June, is designed to operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week. According to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) request for information (RFI), the center would be equipped with data-enabled technology to receive and process between 6,000 and 7,000 calls per day. Its primary function: to support the rapidly expanding 287(g) program, which effectively deputizes local and state law enforcement officers to carry out various immigration enforcement tasks, including the location and apprehension of so-called Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC).
Unaccompanied Alien Children, as defined by the government, are minors who arrive in the United States without a parent or legal guardian and lack legal immigration status. Upon arrival, these children are placed in the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), which operates a network of shelters. Most are eventually released to family members or vetted sponsors, but the time spent in government custody has ballooned under President Donald Trump’s second term. According to figures cited by HuffPost, children discharged from ORR custody in September 2025 spent an average of 186 days in custody—up dramatically from 35 days in October 2024.
ICE’s new call center would serve as a hub for 287(g) partners and field offices, providing “UAC targeting focus and material,” tracking the results of efforts to locate unaccompanied minors, and liaising with the Juvenile and Family Management Division. The center would also cross-check inquiries from local partners against government databases and confirm enforcement actions in the field, according to the RFI. While the precise details of how the center would handle cases involving children remain unclear, the document’s language has alarmed many observers.
“The [call] center will not protect children. It will only serve to make it easier to deport them,” Michael Lukens, executive director for the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, told ABC News. Judith Clerjeune, advocacy director of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, voiced similar concerns in a statement reported by Nashville Public Radio: “We have families who are choosing between putting food on the table and paying their bills. We have kids going hungry. And instead of using our resources to support families we have a regime who is choosing to target children, and it’s unthinkable.”
The expansion of the 287(g) program is a cornerstone of the Trump administration’s immigration policy. Hundreds of local and state law enforcement organizations have signed on to the program, including recent additions such as Texas state troopers. Tennessee lawmakers, after more than a decade since Nashville ended its participation in 287(g), have introduced incentives for communities to rejoin the program and passed legislation targeting undocumented immigrants. These measures include criminalizing sanctuary cities and the smuggling, hiding, and harboring of undocumented individuals. A special legislative session in early 2025 even approved the creation of a centralized immigration enforcement division, one that will be exempt from many open records laws, further raising transparency concerns.
The focus on tracking immigrant children has escalated alongside other controversial ICE policies. By June 2025, approximately 500 children had been re-detained after so-called welfare checks, sometimes following enforcement actions against their sponsors, according to reporting by CNN. ICE has also been accused of offering financial compensation—$2,500—to unaccompanied youth in exchange for their agreement to self-deport and give up any legal case to remain in the U.S. Additionally, ICE has attempted to detain children who "age out" of ORR custody upon turning 18, despite a 2021 court ruling requiring that such individuals be placed in the “least restrictive setting available.”
The administration maintains that these efforts are aimed at combatting human trafficking and protecting vulnerable youth. An internal ICE memo, reported by Reuters and The Guardian in February, emphasized the need to track down unaccompanied children deemed a “flight risk” or a risk to public safety, or those with “executable orders of removal.” The memo instructed agents to enforce final orders of removal and to pursue criminal charges where applicable. “ERO officers should remember they are to enforce final orders of removal, where possible, and HSI will pursue criminal options for UAC who have committed crimes,” the memo stated.
Yet critics argue that these policies do more harm than good. Neha Desai, managing director at the National Center for Youth Law, told Bloomberg she has seen children arrested following routine traffic stops, only to be re-detained in a system “that has become nearly impossible to exit.”
Beyond the call center, ICE’s aggressive enforcement tactics have recently come under renewed scrutiny. On or around November 3, 2025, three masked ICE agents stopped and questioned an Indian-origin Illinois Department of Transportation worker at a Park Ridge construction site, asking about his immigration status and his knowledge of New York City’s mayor-elect, Zohran Mamdani. The worker, a U.S. citizen, was later released. Illinois Governor JB Pritzker sharply criticized the incident, describing it as “identity-based targeting” and condemning DHS and ICE for questioning U.S. citizens based on race. “Our state employees should be able to go to work and do their jobs without masked agents targeting them for no legitimate reason,” Pritzker said in a statement to the Chicago Sun-Times.
Such incidents are not isolated. On November 7, 2025, Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino led a caravan across Chicago’s Southwest Side, stopping residents to question them about their immigration status. The day before, ICE agents entered a North Centre daycare without a warrant, arrested a teacher, and searched every room, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
Meanwhile, the political landscape is shifting. Zohran Mamdani, a 34-year-old Indian-origin American and Muslim, was elected mayor of New York City on November 4, 2025. Mamdani has pledged to halt ICE raids in New York and to resist federal efforts to expand deportations. “If you want to pursue your promise to create the single largest deportation force in American history, or your promise to persecute and punish your political enemies, then you will have to get through me to do that here in New York City,” Mamdani told former anchor Katie Couric, as reported by Chicago Sun-Times.
Amid mounting criticism, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin has dismissed media coverage of the call center, offering only a terse statement: “Your reporting remains incorrect.” No further clarification was provided to HuffPost, Bloomberg, or The Guardian.
As the Trump administration doubles down on its hardline immigration agenda, the nation finds itself at a crossroads—torn between the stated aims of law enforcement and the mounting concerns over civil rights, due process, and the treatment of some of the country’s most vulnerable residents.
