A federal judge in Washington, D.C., stopped Immigration and Customs Enforcement from enacting a new policy to transfer immigrant detainees from children’s shelters to adult detention centers as soon as they turn 18.
The emergency intervention on Saturday afternoon came after two immigrant advocacy groups alerted the court that ICE intended, through a policy enacted this week, to disobey the judge’s previous decision barring the automatic relocation of immigrants aging out of shelters for minors.
U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras temporarily ordered ICE to halt policy changes regarding immigrants turning 18 years old and to turn over to the court any documents about the agency’s new guidance.
But in at least one case on Saturday morning, ICE took custody of a young man living in a shelter on his 18th birthday.
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The young man seeking asylum was supposed to reunite with his mother in Florida upon turning 18, after spending over four months in an Office of Refugee Resettlement shelter. Instead, his attorney received notification Friday evening that ICE planned to detain him the following day.
“We were just taken aback at the audacity, and the lawlessness, and the cruelty of the Trump administration,” said John Barry, the 18-year-old’s attorney, who works at the Orlando Center for Justice.
An hour after Contreras issued the temporary block, Barry picked up his client from an ICE office.
ICE is also preparing to offer minors who entered the U.S. without their parents $2,500 to return to their home country, CNN reported Friday. The option would first go to 17-year-olds.
“Many of these (unaccompanied minors) had no choice when they were dangerously smuggled into this country,” an ICE spokesperson wrote in a statement on the policy. “ICE and the Office of Refugee and Resettlement at HHS are offering a strictly voluntary option to return home to their families.”
Barry compared the new policies with ICE’s attempt earlier this year to quickly deport detained kids in the middle of the night to Guatemala.
“This is a piece of a series of policies by the Trump administration designed to really focus on harming children in ORR custody, and to try to undermine the protections that for decades have been in place to keep these vulnerable children from harm,” he said.
During the first Trump administration, the federal court thwarted ICE’s attempt to carry out the detention of immigrants turning 18 in shelters, requiring the agency to consider the least restrictive alternative.
“The children whose forthcoming planned release ICE has abruptly canceled based on the ‘new Interim guidance’ have post-release plans that have been vetted and approved as providing the least restrictive setting available; the children have already been determined not to pose a flight risk or danger to themselves or others,” the National Immigrant Justice Center and American Immigration Council wrote in Saturday’s court filing.
The emergency motion from the immigrant groups cites an email from an ICE officer in El Paso, Texas, stating that due to a new guidance, immigrants turning 18 in shelters wouldn’t be released and to continue their removal process.
ICE, ORR and the Department of Justice didn’t respond to NOTUS’ request for comment on the latest ruling.
On Monday, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin downplayed the order.
“There is no change in ICE policy and the order in this matter is unnecessary,” she said in an email. “ICE has the statutory authority to detain illegal alien adults; nobody disputes that here. The judge’s order prohibits ICE from doing something which it does not do — getting the aliens directly from ORR.”
This article has been updated with comment from DHS.
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