Deportation amnesty for UAC families tucked inside spending bill

“It puts hundreds of thousands of people off limits for deportation,” said Jessica Vaughan, policy studies director at the Center for Immigration Studies.The provision, sought by Democrats, grows out of the increasingly thorny situation of the tens of thousands of children whose parents pay to smuggle them into the U.S. each year to reunite with their families.

Under existing policy, the children are usually processed and quickly released to sponsors — often the very parents or relatives who paid to smuggle them and, in most cases, who are in the U.S. illegally themselves.

Section 224(a) would make it so ICE cannot detain or remove anyone who has effectively any kind of relationship (even just as a "potential sponsor") with any unaccompanied minor: