San Diego’s congressional delegation on Tuesday demanded answers from the Department of Homeland Security over allegations that an 8-year-old boy was taken into custody after an immigration check.
San Diego Democrats, Reps. Juan Vargas, Sara Jacobs and Scott Peters, along with and Mike Levin, a Democrat whose district includes parts of North County, wrote to DHS Secretary Mullin and Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. expressing their concerns.
The child is an 8-year-old Haitian boy whose temporary protected status allegedly expired. He is a third grader at Fay Elementary School in Colina del Sol.
The lawmakers alleged that an officer with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, citing a 2008 anti-trafficking law, “apparently” placed the child in restraints and took him away from the person who brought him to a Thursday immigration hearing.
“Video footage appears to show the use of restraints on a child who seemed to pose no threat to those around him, raising serious questions about the handling of this incident,” they wrote. “We express concerns about the basis for this action and the harm it may cause a young child who appeared for his required hearing.
The legislators, joined by Democratic Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff, wrote that “the safety and well-being of children and families in San Diego County must remain the highest priority” and called for confirmation of the child’s whereabouts, whether his family is aware of the location, “and what steps your agencies are taking to ensure he can be reunited with them.”
ICE disputed the account in a lengthy statement posted on X Tuesday.
“Allegations that ICE took a third grader into custody to be placed in detention are FALSE, and any suggestion otherwise is a depraved attempt to smear our ICE law enforcement officers and undermine the work of President Trump and Secretary Mullin to protect children,” the agency wrote.
ICE said a man claiming to be the boy’s uncle brought him to an immigration check-in, but could not establish legal guardianship under requirements of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act.
The agency said the boy was then “determined to be an unaccompanied alien child.”
“To ensure the child’s safety, ICE placed him in the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement,” ICE wrote.
The agency also said the child was initially brought to the United States by a man claiming to be his father, who was previously removed to Mexico by Customs and Border Protection.
According to internal ICE data from the Deportation Data Project, a non-profit that compiles federal public records on immigration enforcement, arrests of children are not uncommon in the San Diego area.
In the year and a half between President Trump’s inauguration in January 2025 and August 2026, at least 760 children were arrested by immigration agents in San Diego and Imperial counties. Of these, 267 were 10 years old or younger.
Nearly 200 of the children arrested in the San Diego area were held in a detention center after their arrest, and dozens were held for months on end, violating the Flores Settlement Agreement, which limits detention of children to 20 days.
The closest detention center that accommodates children is the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, where parents and children are detained together in communal cells. Congressional investigations conducted this year have revealed inadequate access to clean water, medical care and education in the center.
The congressional delegation joined school district officials and a San Diego councilman in calling for action on the boy’s behalf.
The day after the incident, leaders of the San Diego Unified School District demanded answers as to the whereabouts of the child. The district claimed that he received a letter to meet with an ICE agent. His uncle, with whom he’s been living since the child’s father was deported more than a year ago, took him to meet the agent because he did not want to break the law, the district said.
The district also sent a letter to Mullin and Kennedy, arguing that “regardless of immigration status or family circumstances, children should not bear the educational consequences of policy decisions over which they have no control.”
“When families are suddenly separated, displaced, detained, or removed from their communities, schools are often left to respond to the resulting trauma and educational disruption,” SDUSD Superintendent Fabi Bagula and other district leaders wrote. “These circumstances place children at significant risk of academic regression, mental health challenges, and long-term instability.”
The TPS for Haitian nationals expired July 27, following a U.S. Supreme Court decision in June which determined the Trump administration could cut off legal protections for thousands of Haitians, as well as Syrians. More than 350,000 Haitians live in the United States, including thousands locally.
Haiti suffered under the rule of dictators from 1957 to 1986, followed by a series of elected presidents, many of whom were military-backed. In recent years, a Transitional Presidential Council was set up as a result of the “Haitian Crisis,” a series of protests against corruption, as well as ongoing armed gang violence.
Since the crisis began in 2018, thousands have been killed and more than 600,000 Haitians have been displaced. Many have come to the United States.
Trump used an expletive to describe Haiti and African countries during a 2018 closed-door meeting and in 2024, he repeated a baseless claim during a presidential debate that Haitian immigrants were “eating the dogs. The people that came in, they are eating the cats.”
The Obama administration initially granted Haitians TPS in 2010 after a 7.0 earthquake struck the island, causing more than 200,000 deaths.
City News Service contributed to this report.
