LEWISTON, Maine — Lisseth Herrera fought back tears as the immigration agent on the other line told her what was about to happen to her teenage son, who had been stopped and detained on his way to work. The officer gave her what sounded like an ultimatum.
“Your son is probably going to be deported to El Salvador,” the officer from US Customs and Border Protection told Herrera, in Spanish, according to a recording of the phone call from Feb. 27. “If you wish, you can turn yourself in, and be deported with him. But he is going to be deported either way.”
Herrera’s son, Jose Adalberto Herrera, who is 17, had been riding to his new job at a construction site earlier that day with his uncle, his mother said. The Maine State Police said in a Facebook post it pulled the car over for speeding and called on Border Patrol for assistance. After determining Jose was in the country without legal status, Border Patrol arrested and detained both the boy and his uncle, the post said. More than two weeks later, Jose remains in federal custody in New York City, apart from his parents and three siblings.
Under former President Joe Biden, the administration said it prioritized detaining and deporting immigrants who had committed crimes, not families, let alone children, who posed no threat to public safety.
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The government is “causing a lot of harm to families,” Lisseth Herrera, 37, said in Spanish at a subsequent interview at her home in Lewiston. (The Globe is using her middle name at her request.) “We are suffering the consequences.”
As the Trump administration ramps up immigration enforcement operations — imposing arrest quotas, pressuring officials to speed up deportations, and emboldening agents to detain more people — immigrant minors are being swept up.
“Immigration enforcement agents across the country are racing to increase arrest numbers at any cost, unnecessarily separating children from their loving families,” said Melissa Adamson, an attorney with the Oakland-based National Center for Youth Law, who represents unaccompanied children in federal immigration custody.
The first Trump administration began separating children from their parents at the southern border in 2018 under a policy known as “zero tolerance” in an effort to discourage families from entering the country illegally. A public uproar put an end to that family separation policy.
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Jose’s case, advocates say, shows the second Trump administration is willing to break up families who are already here, and who in some cases have lived here for years without run-ins with immigration enforcement. His parents have been here for nearly a decade and his two youngest siblings are US citizens.
“This, too, is family separation,” Adamson said.
At the same time, the administration has been dismantling legal protections for unaccompanied minors, which advocates fear could also lead to more families being split up.
The administration temporarily issued, then rescinded, a stop-work order to organizations providing legal representation for these children; instructed officials to track down information on the location of unaccompanied minor children as part of mass deportation efforts, according to an internal memo reviewed by Reuters; and granted some ICE officers access to databases with detailed information about each child.
Jose first entered the United States as an unaccompanied minor in 2019, at age 12. His mother has been here for about nine years, and his father longer. Upon his arrival in the United States, Jose spent more than a month in federal custody while his parents cleared the vetting process required to become his sponsor, allowing him to go home with them. He was supposed to get a date to appear in immigration court, but it never came.
Kira Gagarin, an immigration attorney based in Framingham who is assisting the family, said the government at the time failed to file Jose’s case with the immigration court. His mother said they called the court often, but were told that he did not yet have a case. Years passed, and he remained without a legal status.
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In a statement, a spokesperson for Customs and Border Protection said that when the agency encounters a minor without a legal status who is not with a parent or legal guardian, they are “required by law” to transfer the minor to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which falls under the US Department of Health and Human Services.
The teenager is again being held at a facility housing immigrant minors in New York City run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement — more than 300 miles away from his mother and three younger siblings — just as he was when he first crossed the border. The Administration for Children and Families said ORR does not comment on specific cases to protect the privacy and security of unaccompanied children referred to the agency.
Border Patrol “continues to enforce immigration law,” a spokesperson for the agency said in the statement. “Those that choose to break the law will be apprehended and will face consequences including but not limited to jail time and/or removal from the United States.”
Advocates said it’s almost unheard of for an unaccompanied minor who has been reunited with his family to be sent back to federal custody against the wishes of his guardians. Gagarin called the situation “very scary.”
“I’ve been doing this for 12 years, and I’ve never seen this,” Gagarin said.
Immigration advocates are concerned that this kind of increased surveillance and enforcement, paired with new Trump administration efforts to dismantle protections for migrant children who entered the United States as unaccompanied minors, could make kids more vulnerable to deportation and break up additional families.
Later this month, the multiyear federal contract to provide legal services to tens of thousands of unaccompanied migrant children is set to expire, and providers are unsure whether it will be renewed.
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In New England, advocates working with children who entered the United States without a parent or guardian have been following the directives with alarm. Many of the children they work with have faced gang violence, labor exploitation, sex trafficking, and extreme poverty, among other conditions.
“There’s no rule-following going on right now,” said Leah Jacobs Varo, the unaccompanied children’s program director at the International Institute of New England, an organization supporting refugees and immigrants, based in Boston. “To see it all disintegrate is really devastating.”
In Massachusetts, several hundred children could lose their attorneys if legal representation is cut, with another 2,000 or more children facing the loss of legal assistance just short of full representation, according to a February letter from members of the Massachusetts congressional delegation to the Trump administration.
Without representation in their immigration case, unaccompanied children are much more likely to be issued deportation orders, studies have shown.
Back in Maine, Jose‘s family says they are lost without him. He had taken up the role of a second father figure in the past few months.
The family had just moved north from Long Island in mid-February, finding an apartment with cheaper rent and more space. The children’s father stayed in New York to keep his job as a garbage collector, sending money to his children. Herrera, the mother, worked overnight shifts for years in New York as a seamstress at a clothing factory, she said.
At home, Jose was helping more than ever — baby-sitting, cooking, and grocery shopping — among a host of other things, his mother said.
His youngest sibling, 1-year-old Kasandra, often waits at the door for him, calling out a shortened version of his middle name, Adal. Jose’s 6-year-old brother, Jeyden, misses kicking a soccer ball in the park, or watching Real Madrid games together. Jose’s 11-year-old sister, Evelyn, has been spending time reading one of her favorite anthologies, “Bright Poems for Dark Days.”
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“It’s not the same anymore,” Evelyn said in a whisper.
The family has been staying mostly inside since Jose’s arrest, worried that they, too, could end up in custody. Jose is able to call home briefly about once a day and asks constantly about when he’ll be able to reunite with his family, his mother said.
Jose had been eager to start a job in construction to help the family, too. But instead, he was arrested on his first day on the way to work.
“We contribute to this country . . . and we do it happily to bring a plate of food to our children,” Herrera said. “I just ask God that he change the president’s mind.”
Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio can be reached at giulia.mcdnr@globe.com. Follow her @giuliamcdnr.