This material was originally published by Reform Austin.

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On Thursday, Texas Republican Senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz introduced new legislation aimed at tightening the background checks and placement process for unaccompanied migrant children entering the United States.

The proposal, called the Kayla Hamilton Act , was named in honor of a young Maryland woman who was sexually assaulted and murdered in 2022 by a 17-year-old migrant from El Salvador. Authorities said the suspect was in the country without legal authorization and was affiliated with the MS-13 gang.

Cornyn said the bill responds to failures in federal immigration policy under the Biden administration, “leading to Kayla Hamilton’s life being cut tragically short by an MS-13 gang member who should have never been released into the U.S,” he wrote in an X post.

Under current law, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) must place unaccompanied children in the “least restrictive setting” that serves the child’s best interests, while screening the backgrounds of potential sponsors. 

The new proposal would expand those requirements, directing HHS to assess whether a child poses a danger to themselves or others, could be a flight risk, or has gang-related connections. It would also require the federal government to obtain criminal records from children’s home countries.

The bill further mandates that minors aged 13 or older with gang-related tattoos, criminal histories, or arrests be placed in secure facilities.

The measure mirrors legislation that advanced through the House Judiciary Committee in September on a party-line vote. Democrats during that debate voiced concern that the proposal could slow down placements, overburden HHS, and lead to extended detention of children based on potentially unreliable evidence such as tattoos or foreign criminal records.

Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Dallas, criticized Republicans for naming the bill after Hamilton. “You take a situation, and then you exploit what has happened to not only that person, but you exploit those families, and you make it a game,” she said during the debate on the proposal . “Stop just throwing a random dead person’s name on something for your own political expediency.”

If enacted, the measure would represent one of the largest expansions of federal screening requirements for unaccompanied minors since the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 , which established current standards for their care and release.