Imagine a 12-year-old girl arriving alone at the U.S. border, desperate for safety. She is fleeing a gang member in Central America who had raped her and was threatening her with death unless she became his “girlfriend.”
Until recently, longstanding bipartisan laws would have ensured that this young girl had a chance to pursue protection in the United States — a process rooted in the United States’ legal and moral obligations to children fleeing danger.
But those protections are under systematic attack.
With the passage of the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” this young girl will likely have to pay many thousands of dollars for that chance to access safety. She will be charged $5,000 simply for being apprehended, thanks to the bill’s new mandatory fee for encounters between ports of entry at the U.S. border. In many cases, arriving between ports of entry constitutes unaccompanied children’s only viable means of pursuing legal protection in the United States.
Her applications for humanitarian relief could cost thousands more. The bill imposes new fees ranging from $100 to apply for asylum, plus an additional $100 annually as their application sits in a yearslong backlog; $250 to petition for Special Immigrant Juvenile Status due to parental abuse or abandonment; $550 for asylum applicants to initially apply for an employment authorization document — an essential form of identification for many tender-age and teenage children in the United States — and $275 for each renewal.
And if a child who lacks an attorney misses an immigration court hearing and is ordered to be deported because they cannot so much as read the hearing notice? They could face an additional $5,000 fee.
In other words, the bill creates a pay-to-play protection system for children, granting access to safety only to those who can afford it. Those who cannot will often face rapid return to the same dangers they fled.
There is no realistic scenario in which a child — especially one who arrives without a parent, without resources and often after a harrowing journey — could be expected to pay these sums. The notion that a traumatized child might somehow come up with thousands of dollars on her own is not only absurd, but profoundly cruel.
But the consequences extend far beyond a financial burden. Placing a price tag on child protection invites exploitation. Human traffickers and other bad actors thrive in environments where children are desperate and indebted. Charging vulnerable children thousands of dollars for a chance at protection will effectively strip away any meaningful avenue for children seeking safety while ramping up their risks of trafficking exponentially.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) could also use funding provided by the bill to attempt to return most unaccompanied children rapidly from the border. In doing so, it would deny them both thorough screenings for evidence of human trafficking by child welfare experts and the fair opportunity to seek legal protection — both of which are assured under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act.
Children from Mexico and Canada have long been subject to this summary return process, but now DHS appears intent on applying that process to children of other nationalities, all but guaranteeing returns to traffickers and other bad actors. This would mark a sharp break from decades of bipartisan policy designed to protect children from being sent back into danger.
It also sets a dangerous precedent: that speed and optics at the border can take precedence over a child’s right to safety and due process.
Congress should remedy these infirmities. No one should have to pay to seek safety, particularly children. Lawmakers must exempt unaccompanied children from the new fees imposed on border arrivals and applications for humanitarian protection. Charging a child $5,000 simply for being apprehended in pursuit of safety transforms our protection system into a paywall.
Second, as part of its fiscal 2026 annual appropriations package, Congress should appropriate robust funding for the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s unaccompanied children’s legal services program. Attorneys help children navigate the system, understand their rights and protect them from exploitation. Without that support, many children simply fall through the cracks and are at great risk from those who might take advantage of their vulnerability. Onerous new fees and other obstacles to a fair legal process will make legal representation of this vulnerable population more imperative than ever.
A price tag should never be imposed on a child’s safety. Yet this legislation does exactly that, reducing a child’s chance of protection to a series of fees that many can never afford.
Congress must act immediately to fix these cruel and harmful provisions. Children fleeing violence deserve care, not costs.
