At 1 a.m. they left us at the bridge in Juárez. I asked them why they would throw us to the streets at night with children, and an agent said, ‘That’s your problem, that is not my problem.’

-35-year-old man from Honduras (interviewed by Physicians for Human Rights)

In the dead of night, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is expelling thousands of immigrant infants and toddlers into Mexican border cities that the U.S. State Department says are too dangerous for American tourists. New statistics obtained via a Cato Freedom of Information Act request show that as of May 31, CBP had used its Title 42 “health” authority to expel 30,806 children ages 3 and under—with about 41 percent of these expulsions occurring at midnight or later.

According to CBP’s agreements on repatriation with the Mexican government, no deportations should occur between 10pm and 5am, and anyone with special needs should not be deported between 8pm and 7am. But under Title 42, these restrictions are not being followed. CBP is expelling even very young children to Mexico in the middle of the night. The Biden Administration is actually expelling more children at night than even the Trump Administration did.

The results have been horrific. Many expelled children are then kidnapped by cartels, while others are sent back across to the United States by their parents with family members or smugglers as “unaccompanied” kids. Figure 1 shows the number of toddlers and infants that CBP has expelled for each month since Title 42 started under Trump in March 2020. Two-thirds of the expulsions have been of immigrant toddlers from Honduras and Guatemala, though several countries are represented.

Figure 2 shows the number of expulsions by time of the day for each month from March 2020 to May 2022. The most noticeable jump in nighttime expulsions occurred from August 2021 to September 2021 when the share of infants and toddlers expelled to Mexico increased from 16 percent to 40 percent (of expulsions that listed the time). Note that the percentage increased far more than the absolute number of expulsions between those two months, implying perhaps that a policy change was responsible for the increase. Although the absolute number of expulsions has declined since then, the share being expelled has consistently remained above 50 percent.

The reason to focus on toddlers is that they are the most vulnerable people coming to the border, but older children are also being expelled. CBP expelled 125,907 juveniles under age 18 from March 2020 to May 2022—about 29 percent of those expulsions occurred after midnight. It is not entirely clear why toddlers are more likely to be expelled after midnight than older children, but it could be because Mexican immigration officials aren’t around at those times to object to expulsions of very young children.

Journalist Ryan Devereaux is one of the few reporters to have investigated this phenomenon of late-night expulsions. In April last year, he reported:

As Animal Político, a Mexican news outlet, noted in an investigation published in February, nighttime removals have been happening in some the “most remote and dangerous” locations for migrants on the border for more than a year now. Williams added that KBI is “regularly seeing” expulsions at 2 in the morning. “It’s uniquely frustrating to us as an organization because we fought for years to restrict the hours of repatriation here,” she said. “They’re supposed to be from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m., and now it’s any time.” When people are expelled in the middle of the night, there are no Mexican immigration officials to receive them, Williams explained. While on paper there are populations that the Mexican government will not accept, “when they’re sending them back at 2 in the morning, there’s not a Mexican official on the south side to object to it.”

Human Rights First has listed dozens of known instances of crimes being committed against families sent back to Mexico. Here are some:

Those kidnapped include a Honduran asylum seeker and her three-year-old child who were kidnapped and held for a month after DHS transported them from McAllen and expelled them to Nuevo Laredo, a Guatemalan asylum seeker and his four-year-old son abducted and held for ransom after being expelled by DHS to Nuevo Laredo, a five-year-old Honduran girl kidnapped with her mother in Nuevo Laredo, and a one-year-old Honduran girl and her parents kidnapped the same day they were expelled to Nuevo Laredo in April 2021.

America would benefit from more people of all ages. The United States should be exhausting every legal way to let people into the country legally and let people stay legally. This would keep children from harm and uphold U.S. asylum law, and it would reduce illegal immigration and illegal residence. The United States has never needed people like it needs them now. Birth rates and labor market participation are down, and job openings have never been higher, yet the U.S. government policy toward immigrants has not adjusted.