A bill in the 2025 legislative session would change how the state handles abuse cases of immigrant children without legal status. (Stock photo by SeventyFour/Getty Images)
A bill advancing in the Florida Senate would make it harder for children without legal status who are fleeing abuse in their home countries to become permanent residents.
That’s because they could lose the assistance of immigration attorneys and advocates, who say that SB 1626 would stop them from applying for immigration relief on behalf of such children.
While immigration proceedings fall under the federal government’s jurisdiction, children without legal status can find a pathway to permanent residency if a state court determines they depend on the state and that they are eligible for special immigrant juvenile status. Courts issue such orders when children have been abused, neglected, or abandoned.
Under Vero Beach Republican Sen. Erin Grall’s proposal, courts couldn’t declare that children who immigrated alone were abused if the abuse happened before they entered the country or if an abusive parent is not in the United States.
John Barry, a lawyer who represents immigrant children for the Orlando Center for Justice, calls the bill unethical. He testified against it during its first hearing Wednesday in the Senate Children, Families, and Elder Affairs committee, where it received unanimous approval.
One of Barry’s clients is a 17-year-old girl who came to Florida on her own after her father impregnated her in Guatemala when she was 12, he told lawmakers. Had the bill been in effect, Barry said, he wouldn’t have been able to provide legal representation for the girl.
“So you’re saying that a child victimized outside of the United States cannot seek justice in the United States, if they’re sitting here in our state, in our court, asking for help,” he told Florida Phoenix following the hearing. “I think that’s negligent and cruel.”
Grand jury report
Grall said the changes are necessary to protect unaccompanied minors from ending up in the custody of bad people and to close what she claimed is a loophole allowing criminals and gang members to gain legal status.
“It’s also clear that there is some abuse of the special immigrant juvenile visa by those who have other criminal history, gang activity, that type of thing,” Grall said. “That’s what this is really responsive to and to make sure that we are really looking out for the interest of the children that are within the state of Florida.”
Sections of Grall’s bill referring to unaccompanied minors — meaning kids in the country without their parents or legal guardians — are based on recommendations from a statewide grand jury that Gov. Ron DeSantis petitioned for in 2022.
During his first term, President Donald Trump touted claims that gang members posed as unaccompanied minors at the border. A recent memo from the second Trump administration directs immigration officials to serve unaccompanied minors with notices to appear in court or be deported, according to Reuters.
The grand jury report also asserted that gang members claimed to be unaccompanied minors — a finding that panel said it based on confidential testimony and on written testimony in 2017 from the acting U.S. Border Patrol chief that in five years, the agency had apprehended 159 minors with confirmed or suspected gang affiliations.
However, the American Civil Liberties Union in California won a lawsuit against the federal government in 2017 over wrongful arrests of immigrant teens accused of being gang members.
Jacksonville immigration attorney Maria Aguila said that while she doesn’t file court orders on behalf of unaccompanied minors every week, she’s concerned about what would happen to her open cases if the bill passes.
“It seems to me you just want to send them back to the very country that could end up going back into the system of abuse,” Aguila told the Phoenix in a phone interview Thursday.
Aguila emphasized that Congress created the special immigrant juvenile classification in 1990, which has allowed such children to ask courts for immigration relief.
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What could happen to the children?
Others working with the Orlando Center for Justice said they worry that parts of the bill would leave immigrant kids facing abuse stuck in a legal limbo.
Under Grall’s proposal, only the Florida Department of Children and Families and the 16 community-based care providers to which it outsources child welfare services would be eligible to obtain court orders determining an immigrant kid’s eligibility for protected status.
Melissa Lopez Marantes, executive director of the Orlando Center for Justice, said the bill would prevent advocates like her from petitioning the court to help children fix their immigration status.
She first encountered 12-year-old “Patty” three years ago when the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement placed her in a shelter. (The Phoenix has agreed to use a pseudonym for the child; Marantes used the name when sharing her story with lawmakers to protect the girl’s privacy.)
Patty, who lived with her stepfather in Tallahassee, ended up in the shelter after a neighbor took her to the hospital because she suspected the stepfather was assaulting her. The Orlando Center for Justice petitioned the court to determine Patty’s eligibility for the special juvenile status. She now lives with a foster family seeking to adopt her.
“I’m hopeful that they will continue to listen and to advocate for some of the amendments that might help keep some of these protections so that children can continue to be protected, whether through DCF, which is wonderful, or if there is an error or there’s an issue, through someone stepping in the shoes of DCF,” Lopez Marantes said in an interview with the Phoenix.
Path to residency at the discretion of DCF
The change of a single word under SB 1626 would remove the statutory responsibility for DCF or the community-based care agency to petition the court for protected status on behalf of the immigrant children, the advocates argued — Grall’s proposal states that the department and agencies “may” seek the order instead of stating that they “shall,” which denotes an obligation.
That difference is concerning to Vanessa McCarthy, an attorney for the Orlando Center for Justice who is in the process of adopting an 8-year-old boy from Guatemala. She told the Phoenix she’s had custody of the boy since 2023 but that his lack of permanent legal status has complicated the adoption process. The boy was removed from his father’s care after he was found behind a dumpster, malnourished and with bruises, when he was 5 years old, McCarthy said, tearing up.
“Of course, it’s not necessarily a fairytale. This child is a traumatized child, so there’s a lot of work that needs to go into raising him and making sure he’s safe,” McCarthy said. “It’s still a work in progress. He is doing a lot better right now, and he’s thriving; he plays soccer, he plays basketball.”
McCarthy said she felt obligated to share her kid’s story during the hearing Wednesday.
“I’m an attorney, and I’m having all these issues,” she said. “Imagine a person who does not have the knowledge of how the legal system works.”
Defending the bill, Stephanie Zimmerman, DCF’s deputy director of children’s legal services, said advocates could still file a petition for the court to determine that an immigrant child depends on the state, which is different from a court order allowing kids to seek permanent legal status and protecting them from deportation.
To Barry, the bill is designed to discourage nonprofits and religious groups from providing legal aid to immigrant children.
“One of the main things that you have to do to stabilize a child’s situation if they’re undocumented is you have to get them documented,” Barry said. “If you don’t, they’ll be re-victimized. They won’t be able to lead a lawful life, and they will end up being vulnerable to being trafficked again or to being abused again.”
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Added requirements for sponsors
DCF wants lawmakers to change the definition of who counts as a legal custodian. SB 1626 would require people who get physical custody of unaccompanied minors to notify DCF and submit a DNA test or documentation proving that the child is a family member.
The federal Office of Refugee Resettlement releases children apprehended at the border to sponsors, usually family members, to continue with asylum claims or other immigration proceedings. Grall’s proposals would require those sponsors to become legal guardians under state law, which Zimmerman said would allow for DCF to catch cases of abuse and neglect that now are harder to identify.
“If we can fix that, that very big gap, we will now have the opportunity to protect this vulnerable population and serve the children just as much as the other speakers who have come before you this morning want to do,” Zimmerman told the senators in the committee.
The Trump administration has required fingerprinting of every adult in a household where an unaccompanied minor is placed, according to a Feb. 14 memo.
Between October 2014 and this month, the federal government placed 71,544 minors without legal permanent status with sponsors in Florida, according to data from the office. ORR released more than 1,800 unaccompanied minors to people in the state between last October and February.
The identical House version of the bill has not been heard.
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