A federal judge has temporarily halted a Trump administration initiative that would have kept immigrant children in custody after their 18th birthdays, preventing their transfer to adult detention centers that advocates said were planned for this weekend.
On Saturday, US district judge Rudolph Contreras in Washington DC issued a temporary restraining order directing US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) to stop placing unaccompanied immigrant children into adult detention once they reached legal adulthood, reported the Associated Press.
Contreras ruled that automatically detaining these individuals violates an earlier 2021 court order that explicitly prohibited such actions. The ruling adds to a growing list of federal clashes over Trump’s controversial immigration policies, particularly those involving minors.
Just a day earlier, it was reported by the Guardian that the Trump administration has plans to offer immigrant children $2,500 to self-deport, with a “one-time resettlement support stipend” given to children in exchange for their voluntary departure.
“This policy pressures children to abandon their legal claims and return to a life of fear and danger without ever receiving a fair hearing,” said Murad Awawdeh, president of the New York Immigration Coalition. “The chaos built into this policy will devastate families and communities – and it is targeted to hurt children.”
Under federal law, unaccompanied minors are housed in facilities overseen by the office of refugee resettlement, which operates under the Department of Health and Human Services, not Ice.
Contreras’s 2021 ruling required that when these children turn 18, they must be released to “the least restrictive setting available”, provided they aren’t considered a danger to themselves or others and aren’t likely to flee. Many are placed with relatives or foster families.
Despite the ruling, attorneys representing immigrant youth have also reported receiving alerts that Ice had instructed shelters to stop releasing soon-to-be 18-year-olds, even those with approved release plans, and instead prepare to send them to adult detention, according to the AP.
The Trump administration is also facing accusations of reviving the practice of separating families in order to coerce immigrants and asylum seekers to leave the US, as attorneys and former immigration officials have spoken out against the practice.
In several cases, officials have retaliated against immigrants who challenged deportation orders by forcibly separating them from their children, a Guardian investigation found. The officials misclassified the children as “unaccompanied minors” before placing them in government-run shelters or foster care.
It was also reported earlier this year that Ice officials are actively seeking out unaccompanied immigrant children in operations nationwide with a view to deporting them or pursuing criminal cases against them or adult sponsors sheltering them legally in the US.
Over the past several years, the government has imposed stricter screening before releasing children to relatives or sponsors in the US, extending the average time minors spend in custody. That process, which now involves fingerprinting, DNA tests and home visits, has slowed releases considerably.
Data released last month also revealed that immigrants with no criminal record are now the largest group held in US immigration detention, surpassing the number of detainees who have been charged with crimes.
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