Colorado’s Unaccompanied Refugee Minors (URM) program provides culturally and linguistically appropriate placements for eligible unaccompanied minors in the United States. The goals of the URM program are first to reunify program youth with family or kin and second to provide programming that facilitates social, cultural, and economic integration.
Nationally, the URM program is implemented through a partnership between the United States Department of State’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). In Colorado, this program is a part of the Colorado Department of Human Services’ Office of Children, Youth, and Families. Colorado’s URM program supports and oversees services to URM participants who are placed in foster care settings via partners Lutheran Family Services and the Denver Department of Human Services. Visit Colorado’s URM website for more information.
URM programs administered by states differ from the federally administered Unaccompanied Children (UC) program, operated through ORR.
Am I Eligible?
The URM program is fully funded by ORR, which determines eligibility for the program. Applications for the URM program must be submitted to ORR. Learn more about eligibility requirements and the application process.
- Refugee children and youth who live outside the United States are accepted into the URM program through PRM;
- Children and youth in the custody of the ORR’s UC program must be determined unaccompanied (i.e., without a parent or guardian) by ORR and younger than age 18 at the time they enroll in the program; and
- Refugee minors can become eligible for the URM program after arrival in the U.S. through a reclassification process (e.g. following family breakdown or a death in the family, etc.).
Unaccompanied youth eligible for the URM program must have one of the following statuses:
- Refugee
- Asylee
- Cuban or Haitian Entrant
- Victims of Trafficking (T-visa for T-Visa eligibility letter)
- Special Immigrant Juvenile (SIJ) meeting certain criteria
- Afghan Evacuee with Humanitarian Parole
- U Status Recipient (victim of a qualifying crime)