by Bernard P. Perlmutter, JD
“Victoria’s” case as an unaccompanied refugee minor (URM), a teenager born in Honduras, is being heard in a Florida state juvenile court. The judge hears from a Catholic Charities social worker about how Victoria is faring in her home and at school. The judge wants to know if she’s seen a doctor and about her last visit to the dentist. Unlike a typical judicial review hearing for a foster child in temporary state custody, however, the court cannot make findings about her birth parents, whether they have completed tasks in the agency’s case plan so that they can regain custody of their daughter, or whether Victoria is on track to be adopted by her foster parents. The judge asks: Why can’t Victoria be adopted?
This article summarizes key legal, policy, and operational issues related to the Unaccompanied Refugee Minors Program (URMP), focusing on children like Victoria who are selected for entry into the program. It explores the design of state URM systems and compares the federal URM foster care and state-based dependency frameworks.
Victoria’s case reflects a common trajectory among URMs: she was granted asylum by an Immigration Judge, based on a well-founded fear of returning to Honduras and concerns that contacting her parents in her homeland could be dangerous to the parents. Without family members in the United States to adequately care for her, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) classified Victoria as an unaccompanied refugee minor as defined in 45 C.F.R § 400.115.
Design and Oversight of State-Level URM Programs
URM care is federally funded but operationalized through contracts with state agencies and local providers. Federal laws, including INA § 412(d), 8 U.S.C. § 1522(d), provide the framework, while foster placements must comply with the laws of the hosting state.
The federal URM Program is uniquely structured: while it is nationally funded and governed through 45 C.F.R. Parts 400 and 401, it is implemented through a decentralized patchwork of state-run refugee programs in coordination with national resettlement agencies, most prominently the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS) (Marouf v. Azar, 2019). These non-governmental organizations work with state-level refugee coordinators and local providers to deliver services.
Two pieces of legislation authorize the URM and Unaccompanied Alien Child (UAC) Programs: the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 (TVPRA) and the Refugee Act of 1980. The TVPRA authorizes ORR to “award grants to, and enter into contracts with, voluntary agencies to carry out [the UC Program]” 8 U.S.C. § 1232(i) while the Refugee Act authorizes ORR “to provide assistance, reimbursement to States, and grants to and contracts with public and private nonprofit agencies” to carry out the URM Program (8 U.S.C. § 1522(d)(2)(A)). Despite these shared foundations, states vary widely in how they integrate URM children into their existing child welfare systems.
Comparison of URMP Federal Foster Care System and State Systems
State child welfare systems rely on case plans and court monitoring to guide reunification, adoption, or other permanency options under statutes like Chapter 39 of Florida Statutes. Like Florida’s requirements, the federal URM system prioritizes “least restrictive settings” and best interest placements (8 U.S.C. § 1522(d);; 45 CFR §§ 400.115(c), 400.118(b)). Additionally, children in domestic foster care are separated from their parents through legal means while URMs are fleeing persecution and are separated from their parents largely through circumstances such as war, persecution, or genocide (Congressional Research Service, 2008; Office of Refugee Resettlement, 2025).
Although data is sparse, URMP children are generally unable to reunite with their families, much less communicate with them in their homeland. This is because the refugee law by design limits contact with the left-behind parents to not endanger their safety in their home country. Thus, the family reunification norms of a state foster care proceeding are absent, and parents are not treated as parties or even participants in these cases. This runs counter to principles that govern foster care proceedings in which the parents are considered to have an intrinsic right to the care and custody of their children, and children have a reciprocal right to be raised by their birth families (Trivedi, 2021).
Under most state dependency proceedings, plans typically focus on reunification with birth parents as the primary goal, followed by adoption or guardianship as permanency alternatives. The Adoption and Safe Families Act mandates "reasonable efforts" toward reunification and establishes timelines for termination of parental rights proceedings. Similarly, the URMP prioritizes “family reunification [as] the objective of the program.” (45 U.S.C. § 400.115(c)). However, the law’s prohibitions on contacting parents in their home countries to protect them from potential persecution effectively eliminates reunification as a viable case plan goal.
The federal law also recognizes that URMP children may be eligible to be adopted “in certain rare cases” such as when parents are deceased or their rights have been terminated or “pursuant to adoption laws in the State of resettlement” (45 U.S.C. 400.115(c)). There are few known examples of URMP children adopted in the U.S. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in Adoption of Yadira (2017) held that the Department of Children and Families had the legal authority under federal regulations to petition for termination of the parental rights on behalf of URMs to facilitate their adoptions. By contrast, in Victoria’s case, Catholic Charities opposed the formality of adding adoption as a case plan goal, while at the same time skirting the reunification aims of the statute by limiting her parents’ participation in state court proceedings. As a result, Victoria has the worst of both worlds: she is likely to remain in a foster care limbo, neither adopted nor reunified for the remainder of her childhood.
Strengthening Permanency Outcomes for URMP Children
The Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS) is a reliable reporting system that provides statistics used by agencies and individuals for information on children entering foster care, permanency, and exiting foster care (AFCARS Dashboard, May 2025). AFCARS data shows that nationally, 44% of youth exiting foster care in FY 2023 reunified with their families, while 27% were adopted and 10% exited into guardianship placements. In FY 2023, 15,590 youth aged out of foster care. However, unaccompanied minors are omitted from AFCARS reporting, creating a significant blind spot in our understanding of permanency outcomes for URMPs. Nevertheless, this is a reliable source to set a benchmark for citizen children and to compare with URMPs.
The URMP provides very limited data on permanency outcomes for refugee children. In 2021, ACF’s Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE) concluded a three-year descriptive study of the URM program to better understand the range of child welfare services and benefits provided through individual URM programs and the characteristics and experiences of youths served (OPRE, 2021). According to that report, 1,873 youth from 46 countries were specifically served by the URM program (ORR Report, 2021, p. 55). It is important to note that most URM placements are in licensed foster homes, but other placements may be used according to a child’s needs, such as therapeutic foster care, group homes, residential treatment centers, or independent living programs (Desai, et al., 2019, p. 13).
The lack of data on URMPs may be explained by individual state discretion. For instance, according to the ORR 2021 Annual Report to Congress, “depending on the state, the youth may continue to receive benefits and services through the URM program after emancipation from foster care,” thus creating inconsistent tracking across jurisdictions (ORR Report, 2021, p. 55). Prior to 2012, referrals of UACs to ORR ranged between 6,000 to 8,000 annually. By 2024, the referral numbers reached 98,356. As of May 2025, the average number of UACs in care is 2,433 with an average length of care of 191 days for those discharged and 163 days for those in care. As of 2025, 356 unaccompanied children, ages 0-12 were in transitional (short-term) foster care (ORR UAC Data, 2025).
Much of the available data about migrant children is for the general UAC Program, whereas the URMP serves migrant children with specific legal designations (Hollman, 2020). For this reason, there are many overlaps with the URM and UAC programs (Hollman, 2020). Unaccompanied minors entering the U.S. are placed in ORR custody and only become eligible for URMP upon submission of an application on their behalf. They may be eligible if they are refugees, asylees, youth with Special Immigrant Juvenile classification, victims of trafficking, and a few more legal categories (Mandelbaum, 2023).
The absence of data collection creates significant knowledge gaps, and it limits our ability to help vulnerable URMP children such as Victoria to achieve permanency in the U.S. unlike their U.S. citizen counterparts in state foster care systems.
Further research is needed on how many URMP children age out without achieving permanency and percentages of URM children who achieve adoption, guardianship or reunification. Additionally, more study of the mental health needs of these traumatized youth is essential (OPRE, 2021, pp. 8-9).
Bernard P. Perlmutter, Esq., is a professor of law and co-director of the Children & Youth Law Clinic at the University of Miami School of Law. The Clinic represents foster children and refugee minors in Florida's foster care system. Contact: [email protected]