Seven Democrats Voted to Strip Search 12-Year-Olds (December 2025)

Congress just authorized federal agents to examine the naked bodies of children. Alone. Without their parents.

They're calling it the Kayla Hamilton Act.

H.R. 4371 passed the House 225-201 on Monday. Seven Democrats handed Republicans the margin they needed. Henry Cuellar of Texas, Don Davis of North Carolina, Laura Gillen of New York, Jared Golden of Maine, Vicente Gonzalez of Texas, Adam Gray of California, and Marie Glusenkamp Perez of Washington decided invasive body examinations of 12-year-olds constituted sound immigration policy.

The bill mandates that Health and Human Services examine children in federal custody for gang tattoos and markings. Immigration officers can conduct these searches while kids are alone, stripped down, and without guardians present. The ACLU warns the examinations will predictably result in psychological harm and trauma. Civil rights groups are less diplomatic. They're calling it state-sanctioned abuse wrapped in protection language.

Kayla Hamilton was 20 when Walter Javier Martinez strangled her with a phone cord. He raped her first. Then he stole six dollars from her wallet and walked away from the Aberdeen, Maryland, mobile home where her body lay bound and lifeless. Martinez was 16, fresh off a border crossing from El Salvador just four months earlier. MS-13 gang member. Documented tattoos. Prior arrest for gang affiliation back home. None of that stopped his placement with a sponsor or his subsequent enrollment in a Maryland high school where 1,400 students had no idea a murder suspect walked their halls.

Hamilton's death was preventable, grotesque, unforgivable.

Using her name to justify stripping 12-year-olds is something else entirely.

The legislation doesn't stop at body examinations. Kids labeled flight risks based on those searches get shuttled into secure facilities—juvenile detention by another name—where they can languish for the duration of their immigration proceedings. Sponsors who aren't citizens or green card holders are disqualified from taking custody, shrinking the pool of eligible family members and guaranteeing longer detention. Information about sponsors gets funneled to immigration enforcement, which means parents living in the United States without documentation won't risk coming forward to claim their children.

Representative Derek Tran of California voted no. He called Hamilton's death horrific while arguing the bill falls drastically short of accountability and instead harms vulnerable children fleeing the same gang violence that bred Martinez. Kids in Need of Defense characterized the legislation as rooted in punitive measures rather than protection. The organization noted that unaccompanied children are often victims of violence themselves, which makes subjecting them to invasive searches a particular cruelty.

Representative Pat Harrigan of North Carolina sees things differently. He invoked fatherhood and responsibility, suggesting strip searches and extended detention represent the government getting it right when it takes custody of children.

The numbers tell their own story. Fiscal year 2022 saw 152,057 encounters with unaccompanied children at the border, a 400 percent spike over the 33,239 encounters during fiscal year 2020 under Trump. The Biden administration processed over 500,000 unaccompanied minors, prioritizing speed over vetting according to critics. Martinez slipped through those cracks. So did the system's obligation to protect both Hamilton and the thousands of children who cross the border fleeing circumstances most Americans can't fathom.

Now those children pay the price. An allegation becomes sufficient justification for invasive examination. Protection rhetoric conceals expanded surveillance and control. The bill trades one tragedy for systematic abuse of vulnerable populations, and seven Democrats decided that sounded reasonable.

The legislation heads to the Senate next. If it passes, federal custody becomes a gauntlet where scared kids face strip searches, prolonged detention, and separation from family members too terrified of deportation to step forward. Hamilton deserved justice. She got a political prop instead, her name slapped on legislation that authorizes precisely the kind of dehumanization she would have recognized as cruelty.

There's always another tragedy waiting to be weaponized. Another name to slap on legislation that does the opposite of what it promises. But that's not new. Or as shocking as this: a country that examines the naked bodies of terrified children and calls it justice needed politicians willing to provide those votes. It found seven Democrats.

@Santitos

@salinasmariasantos

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