Federal court blocks ICE from detaining unaccompanied minors once they turn 18

[Thiệu Ngô]

The ruling comes a day after ICE confirmed it would offer unaccompanied minors money to self-deport to their home countries.

By Eric Bazail-Eimil

A federal judge on Saturday blocked Immigration and Customs Enforcement from immediately transferring minors into federal immigration detention once they turn 18, a day after the agency rolled out changes to its policy around unaccompanied minors.

In a two-page order, Judge Rudolph Contreras — an Obama appointee on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia — sided with two immigration advocacy groups who filed an emergency motion Friday over the new policy.

Contreras blocked the agency from making any changes to how unaccompanied minors are treated once they turn 18, and from further contravening a 2021 injunction which requires ICE and the Department of Health and Human Services to pursue the least restrictive and punitive arrangements possible in addressing age-outs, the term for those unaccompanied children who turn 18 in federal custody or foster care with pending cases.

The ruling came just a day after ICE quietly rolled out a related policy to grant minors $2,500 if they agreed to leave the U.S. and withdraw their claims in immigration court once they turned 18. The policy was framed by ICE as a “strictly voluntary” way to allow unaccompanied minors to return to their home countries if they so wished.

The self-deportation would also need to be approved by a judge and the offers were only being extended to 17-year-olds at this stage, ICE said. Thousands of children who came by themselves to the United States remain in shelters run by the Department of Health and Human Services or in foster care or the care of guardians in the United States.

But in a filing with the court, the American Immigration Council and National Immigration Justice Center argued that ICE had also informed field offices this week that age-outs should immediately and indefinitely be sent to adult detention facilities.

“It’s clear that they’re testing out several policies of dubious legality — or clearly illegal in the case of the policy referenced in our lawsuit — and seeing what sticks,” Michelle Lapointe, legal director at the American Immigration Council, said in an interview.

ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the temporary restraining order.

Saturday’s ruling is a win for immigration advocates, who warned that in addition to violating the nationwide injunction, the policy could have resulted in unaccompanied minors with potentially legitimate claims for asylum and other legal status in the United States self-deporting out of fear in light of the related cash offer.

Advocates had said Friday that this would especially be the case if the offer for financial support for returning to their home countries was accompanied by threats to arrest family members or send minors immediately into federal detention facilities once the minors in question turned 18.

The order could potentially preclude the immediate detention of any unaccompanied minors who turn down the cash offer and opt to remain in the U.S. while their claims work their way through the immigration court system, the advocates said.