A Chicago immigration judge ordered at least six unaccompanied children removed in August, while children from around the country were sent to his courtroom, according to reports. Immigration Judge Shawn Abraham appeared remotely during the proceedings.
CBS News Chicago reported on an August hearing in which ten children, ages 12 to 17, appeared without their parents. Abraham appeared before the children via video call while they attended in person, and the court does not allow recording of any kind, including over the video feed, so CBS News Chicago could not show footage of the proceedings, according to CBS News.
Cases From Around the Country
Children from around the country have been sent to Abraham's courtroom for hearings.
CBS News reported that Abraham was appointed as an immigration judge by the Justice Department in May and had spent more than 12 years as a prosecutor at the Cook County State's Attorney's Office before later working as an attorney for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Six Children Ordered Removed Over Abandonment Findings
In the August proceedings, Abraham ordered six children removed after state courts had deemed them abandoned, CBS News reported. Ten children appeared for hearings without their parents that day, and the six ordered removed were between 12 and 17 years old. Each of the six had a pending application for Special Immigrant Juvenile Status — a federal classification intended to help neglected, abused or abandoned children, with eligibility requirements outlined in federal law and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services policy manual. Abraham ordered them removed anyway, arguing the time it would take for them to acquire valid visas was too long, according to the CBS News account.
The four children who were not ordered removed that day were scheduled to return to court in as little as two weeks, the station's report notes. Separately, the Chicago Tribune reported that on Aug. 26, Abraham entered removal orders for at least six children during proceedings in Chicago Immigration Court, including a 12-year-old boy ordered removed to El Salvador despite being described as having no caregivers there, according to the Chicago Tribune. Block Club Chicago reported that several of the children had pending or approved Special Immigrant Juvenile Status applications, according to Block Club Chicago.
Backlash From Local Leaders
Abraham's orders sparked backlash from local leaders in August. U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin said he wished people who made claims about deporting the worst criminals could see the children appearing in Abraham's court, per CBS News Chicago's reporting.
Part of a Broader National Surge
The Chicago cases sit within a sharp nationwide increase in child immigration enforcement. ICE arrested more than twice as many children during the first half of 2026 as during the same period the year before, and more than 1,100 children were arrested by the agency in July 2026 alone, according to a dashboard maintained by The Marshall Project. The daily average number of children in ICE custody climbed to roughly 200, compared with just 23 the year before, and more than 22,000 children have been deported since Trump returned to office in January 2025, the organization's tracking shows.
Removal orders for unaccompanied children nearly tripled nationally, from 390 per month in January 2025 to 1,112 per month in July 2026, while asylum approval rates for unaccompanied minors fell from 11% to roughly 1.5% over the same stretch, according to Bloomberg Law.
