Assistance program
Unaccompanied Children Program
$16.8 Billion committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- Administration for Children and Families, Health and Human Services, Department of
- Assistance
- Project Grants (Cooperative Agreements or Contracts)
- CFDA number
- 93.676
- What it does
- The Unaccompanied Children Bureau (UCB) provides for the care and placement of unaccompanied minors who are apprehended in the U.S. by Homeland Security agents, Border patrol agents, or other federal law enforcement agencies and are taken into care pending resolution of their claims for relief under U.S. immigration law or release to parent, adult family members, or another responsible adult. Resolution of their claims may result in release, granting of an immigration status (such as special immigrant juvenile or asylum), voluntary departure, or removal. The Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), Unaccompanied Children Bureau has six Notices of Funding Opportunities (NOFOs) under this program, which delineate the different types of care for Unaccompanied Children: Shelter and Transitional Foster Care (Shelter/TFC) Staff-Secure, Long-Term Foster Care (LTFC), Therapeutic Group Home, Residential Treatment Center, Home Study and Post-Release Services, and Unaccompanied Lived Experience and Youth Engagement Program.
- Who benefits
- Beneficiaries for all NOFOs are unaccompanied children, up to 18 years of age, who are in Federal custody by reason of their immigration status.
- Who applies
- Care providers for all categories need to be licensed or obtain a license prior to accepting dependent children into their care. Applications from individuals (including sole proprietorships) and foreign entities are not eligible. Faith-based and private for-profit organizations who can provide state licensed residential capacity and other requisite services are eligible.
- Authorized by
- Homeland Security Act of 2002
- William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008
- Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003
- Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013
- Program site
- https://www.acf.hhs.gov/orr ↗
Committed by fiscal year
* FY2026 is year-to-date — the fiscal year is still in progress, so its total is still filling in. The striped band and dashed line mark that provisional stretch.
How the money flows
Committed dollars by how this program's money is paid out.
Grants
$16.8B
100%
Top recipients
By dollars committed.
How to read these numbers
- Committed through this program
Money committed under this assistance listing (its CFDA program), counted in the year each action happened.
- How it's paid
Most programs pay out one way — a grant, or a direct payment to individuals; the flow bar only appears when a program genuinely mixes types.
- Some recipients aren't itemized
For entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, the government reports one aggregate instead of naming tens of millions of people, so the recipient roster isn't part of the public record.
- Awards, counted once
An award count is the number of distinct awards with at least one action that year — each counted once, however many times it was amended.
- The colored bars
Every bar on this page splits by how the money moves:
Direct payments