In partnership with the Children’s Village, the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) has begun a one-year project looking back at the Unaccompanied Children’s Program from the passage of the Homeland Security Act of 2002 until today.

This project will look at how the care of unaccompanied children has changed since the Homeland Security Act of 2002. It will explore the transfer of the program from the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) and other major legislation passed since the transfer. It will analyze policies and executive orders issued from past administrations and find where unaccompanied children are today. It will also assess the next possible steps for the Unaccompanied Children’s Program in the United States.

USCRI Vice President AnnaMarie Bena and Policy Analyst Jenny Rodriguez, who is leading the project, sat down with Jeremy Kohomban, President and CEO of the Children’s Village, on Thursday, January 13, 2021, to talk about the first installment of the 20-year retrospective on unaccompanied children that will be released at the end of January 2022. The report will look at the period after the Homeland Security Act of 2002 and the transfer of the program from INS to ORR and take a closer look at the Homeland Security Act of 2002 and how ORR implemented it.