Most Unaccompanied Migrant Children Stuck In Federal Custody

Here are the morning’s top stories on Tuesday, December 16, 2025…

• For the last six weeks, children who crossed the US-Mexico border alone have been inexplicably stuck in federal custody at shelters across the country. The Trump administration has stopped releasing these kids to their families and loved ones. It’s not saying why. But sources in the government agency that’s in charge of unaccompanied kids — and lawyers who help them —  say they’ve never seen anything like this. 
• Federal authorities say they’ve thwarted a plot to bomb five locations around Southern California on New Year’s Eve. The FBI has arrested four people who they say belong to an extremist anti-government group. 
• After a Supreme Court decision that allowed authorities to penalize people for sleeping outdoors, the City of Fresno was one of the first to enact its own anti-camping law. Now, a class action lawsuit is challenging its legality.

Trump Administration Not Releasing Migrant Children To Families, Sponsors

For more than a month, children who crossed the US-Mexico border alone have been inexplicably stuck in federal custody at shelters across the country. The Trump administration has stopped releasing these kids to their families and loved ones, and is not saying why.

But sources in the government agency that’s in charge of unaccompanied kids — and lawyers who help them — tell The California Newsroom’s Mark Betancourt, they’ve never seen anything like this.

These kids crossed the border without a parent or guardian. And when they’re apprehended by immigration officials, they’re handed over to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, ORR, who generally puts them in group shelters across the country. In California, there are about 30 of these shelters, with about 300 kids.

Many of these kids actually came to the U.S. to join their parents or other family members. In immigration speak these adults are called sponsors, and they have to be vetted by the government to make sure they’re safe before the kids are released to them. But a source inside ORR said that since the start of November, the government has pretty much stopped releasing kids to sponsors, even those who had cleared the vetting process.

In the month of October, before this apparent moratorium, the government was releasing about four kids per day to sponsors – that’s like 115 kids for the month. But over the last month and a half, they’ve released only four kids total to sponsors.

4 Charged With Plotting New Year’s Eve Attacks In Southern California

Federal authorities said Monday that they foiled a plot to bomb multiple sites of two U.S. companies on New Year’s Eve in Southern California after arresting members of an extremist anti-capitalist and anti-government group.

The four suspects were arrested Friday in the Mojave Desert east of Los Angeles as they were rehearsing their plot, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said during a news conference. Officials showed reporters surveillance aerial footage of the suspects moving a large black object in the desert to a table. Officials said they were able to make the arrests before the suspects assembled a functional explosive device.

In the criminal complaint, the four suspects named are Audrey Illeene Carroll, 30; Zachary Aaron Page, 32; Dante Gaffield, 24; and Tina Lai, 41. They are all from the Los Angeles area, Essayli said.

Officials did not describe a motive but said they are members of an offshoot of a group dubbed the Turtle Island Liberation Front. The group calls for decolonization, tribal sovereignty and “the working class to rise up and fight back against capitalism,” according to the criminal complaint.

Fresno Attorney Mounts Federal Legal Fight Against City’s Anti-Camping Law

A Fresno-based attorney is mounting a class action lawsuit against the city over its anti-encampment law.

Attorney Kevin Little is challenging the constitutionality of the City of Fresno’s anti-encampment policy in the U.S District Court for the Eastern District of California. The lawsuit, filed last week, names Wickey TwoHands and Joseph Quinney as plaintiffs.

TwoHands made headlines earlier this year as the first unhoused person to be prosecuted by the City Attorney’s Office under the new law. TwoHands’ case was thrown out of court after a judge ruled that city prosecutors violated TwoHands’ right to a speedy trial.

The lawsuit alleges that the camping ban violates unhoused people’s civil rights. And it accuses authorities of discriminating against the elderly and the disabled when making arrests. “People’s mere existence is becoming illegal and this is now even worse for the unhoused community, which demographics show is disproportionately elderly and disabled,” Little said. Fresno City Attorney Andrew Janz responded that he looks forward to taking this case to the Supreme Court.