For nearly a week, a Minneapolis family had no idea where their 16-year-old son was after a routine traffic stop ended with federal agents taking him into custody and flying him out of state. The boy, identified in court papers only by initials and called Sebastian by his family, told relatives that officers let him make a brief call to his father, then took his phone away. When his family and attorneys started calling around, they discovered he had been labeled an “unaccompanied minor” and swept into the federal system.
Attorneys responded with an emergency wrongful detainment petition and began pressing federal officials for answers. In written court correspondence, they were told there was no trace of him in immigration detention. An attorney for ICE wrote, “I have done some research, and it does not appear that this Petitioner is in ICE custody.” Investigators eventually traced Sebastian’s calls to a shelter, and his legal team was able to recover him on Jan. 26. Those twists are documented by the Star Tribune.
Bridgeway Shelter And Its Track Record
Sebastian had been checked into Bridgeway, a 36-bed short-term residential program in Grand Rapids operated by Bethany Christian Services. State licensing and inspection files note lapses in background checks and internal reviews into staff conduct at the facility in recent years. The organization describes Bridgeway as a transitional assessment and short-term care site for immigrant youth, according to records posted on DocumentCloud and information from Bethany Christian Services.
How “Unaccompanied” Can Erase Parents’ Trails
Once Sebastian was transferred, officials assigned him a new alien number and shifted custody to the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Lawyers say that the bureaucratic reset made it far harder to track him and reunite him with his parents. Advocates add that the “unaccompanied minor” label, historically reserved for children picked up at the border, is increasingly being used in interior enforcement. The result, they argue, is that parents face steeper sponsor checks and more demanding documentation before they can bring their own children home. Those concerns were detailed by the Star Tribune.
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