Migrants sneaking illegally into the United States from countries other than Mexico are renting families — mostly small children — to ensure that if they are apprehended, they won’t be deported, but released back into the United States, a top immigration official said yesterday.

The “rent-a-family” scheme, said John P. Torres, director of the Office of Detention and Removal at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), is being used by alien smugglers along the U.S.-Mexico border — mainly in Texas — to circumvent a new expedited-removal program for non-Mexican aliens, whose arrest under existing deportation policies had become known as “catch-and-release.”
“They are passing themselves off as a family, paying to have children smuggled with them across the border, because the smugglers know we’re not going to break up a family for the deportation process,” Mr. Torres said. “They’re renting babies — the younger the better — including those not yet of speaking age.
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Mr. Torres said the children are being rented out by families along the border, and authorities are not sure how they are being returned after crossing into the United States. But, he said, some of the children are being rented more than once.
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