The Oregon congresswoman who successfully spearheaded the release of several children from federal custody is pushing for more regulations to protect immigrant children from detention.
U.S. Rep. Maxine Dexter, a Portland pediatrician representing Oregon’s 3rd Congressional District, introduced abillThursday to prevent federal immigration agents from detaining children without a parent present or from pressuring youth to sign documents without an attorney. The bill would also prohibit military resources from being used to conduct child deportations.
Federal agents have detained at least 39 kids aged 18 or younger in Oregon since the start of the second Trump administration, according to theDeportation Data Project. Thelawyers and academics who run the data project collected national immigration arrest data from public records requests between Oct. 1, 2022 and March 10, 2026.
Nearly half of those kids were younger than 10, with the youngest being a 3-year-old boy from Mexico.
The detentions and court appearances, occurring often without a parent or attorney present, are paid for with taxpayer dollars, Dexter said.
“As long as the Trump administration continues to place children in immigration custody, Congress has a responsibility to establish clear protections for their safety, dignity, and legal rights,” Dexter said in a statement. “This bill is the floor, not the ceiling. While we fight to end child detention altogether, we must ensure that every child in federal custody is protected by basic standards of due process and humane treatment.”
Most child detentions in Oregon have taken place in Dexter’sdistrict, which consists of most of Portland east of the Willamette River and towns including Gresham, Hood River and Sandy.
Dexter has advocated and successfully secured the release of at least five children and their parents from immigration custody, including a Honduranmotherand her four U.S.-born children, and a7-year-old girlfrom Venezuela who was detained with her parents on the way to urgent care.
Most of the kids federal agents have detained were listed in federal records as a targeted arrest, or a pre-planned operation with agents looking for a specific individual. But three of the children, including the child on her way to urgent care with her parents, were listed as “collateral” detentions, or the result of a street sweep in which people are singled out based on appearance or their proximity to someone wanted on a warrant.
Dexter’s bill has 25 Democratic cosponsors, including Oregon’s U.S. Reps. Val Hoyle and Andrea Salinas.
The bill also has support from the American Civil Liberties Union, National Center for Youth Law, National Immigrant Justice Center and the Acacia Center for Justice.
“Over the last year, we have seen unparalleled attacks on the safety and due process rights of children by the Trump administration,” said Sarah Mehta, deputy director for policy and government affairs for immigration at the ACLU. “The (bill) is a critical step towards ensuring that children are not pressured to give up their rights or swept up in reckless and aggressive immigration enforcement operations.”
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