If youve ever spent time with a kid, you know they usually have a favorite toy something that calms them down, makes them feel safe or simply cheers them up when theyre bored. A stuffed dog, say, or a doll, or a little car.

Those toys may be especially meaningful for children who are separated from their parents by federal authorities at the border. Theyre taken away to a foreign place and dont know when theyll next see their family. A small item from home would be comforting.

But they dont get to have them. Federal agents confiscate any possessions they have.

Customs and Border Protection take away the items carried by undocumented immigrants, including children, when they cross the border. Anything considered nonessential and potentially lethal is confiscated including childrens shoelaces .

The migrants are supposed to receive a ticket for those items similar to a baggage check and get them back when theyre released, according to Michelle Bran, director of migrant rights and justice at the Womens Refugee Commission. But that system doesnt always work.

In those circumstances, those possessions dont always follow them from place to place, she said. Theyre held in some big warehouse, and its often very very difficult to get them back. Oftentimes theyre lost indefinitely... I generally have not heard of people being able to get much of them back.

Children who are taken from their parents are initially held in detainment centers operated by CBP. Those facilities are the ones where children are placed in cages, with the lights on 24 hours a day. They have no toys or anything else to play with.

If theyre not released to family members, they then go to shelters operated by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services, where they do have recreation and items for kids to play with. Bran said children may get their possessions back then, but she wasnt sure. Neither CBP nor ORR responded to a request for comment.

Theyre not supposed to be there [in CBP custody] for more than 72 hours, Bran said. But what were seeing now, because theyre creating this crisis and this backup theyre separating kids and creating these new unaccompanied children and ORR doesnt have room for them theyre sort of sitting in the border patrol stations for longer.

This confiscation policy predates President Donald Trump . But more children are being separated from their parents now as part of his zero-tolerance approach to illegal border crossings. The Trump administration is prosecuting as many illegal entry cases as possible, even if it requires locking up parents away from their kids.