The feds are back at it with the shady moves, and this time they're targeting kids who don't have anybody in their corner. On June 25, 2026, Senator Ron Wyden from Oregon put the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on blast, accusing them of cooking up some "unprecedented legal framework" to deport over 500 unaccompanied migrant children who are currently locked in the system under the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR).

Wyden wrote a letter straight to the top boss at HHS, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., saying he got the receipts—what he calls "credible information"—that the department has a specific list of 500-plus kids they want to fast-track out of the country. Wyden is calling this whole operation "deeply alarming" and telling them they need to halt all these screenings and removals immediately before they do some irreversible damage.

To understand how dirty this play is, you gotta look at who these kids are. The letter says they are classified as "Category 4" children. That means they have absolutely no viable sponsor in the U.S.—no family, no relatives, nobody to vouch for them or take them in. They’ve been stuck in federal custody for at least 180 days, mostly living in long-term foster care setups run by ORR all over the country. They are the most vulnerable kids in the system, with zero safety net.

On top of that, Wyden pointed out that almost all of these kids actually have lawyers representing them in court. Trying to kick them out of the country without letting their lawyers know is "a severe breach of due process." Wyden is warning that HHS is trying to dodge the legal system completely to send these kids back to dangerous situations in places like Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Afghanistan.

"This is a severe institutional failure that places hundreds of vulnerable children in immediate jeopardy, effectively erasing them from the protection of US oversight and thrusting them back into danger," Wyden wrote. He didn't hold back, saying that "weaponizing" the exact agency that is supposed to protect these kids is a wild executive overreach that spits in the face of due process.

Wyden also exposed the timing of this whole hustle. There is a June 30, 2026, deadline for the immigration courts to finish up the cases for these kids. Wyden is saying HHS is trying to run a sneaky, parallel internal screening process to deport the kids before the judges can even make a ruling. "The timing is not coincidental; it is a transparent attempt to evade imminent judicial oversight and cut off all unaccompanied children’s access to legal remedies," he wrote.