A federal judge has temporarily halted a new policy from the Trump administration that involves holding migrant children in detention once they turn 18. This swift decision was made to prevent scheduled transfers of these young individuals to adult detention centers, which advocates warned could happen as soon as this weekend.
On Saturday, U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras issued a temporary restraining order directing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) not to place any unaccompanied minors who entered the country unlawfully, into adult detention facilities after they reach adulthood.
The Washington, D.C., judge found that such automatic detention violates a court order he issued in 2021 barring such practices.
ICE and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security didn’t immediately respond Saturday to emails seeking comment.
This initiative to transfer young adults is another contentious point in President Donald Trump’s stringent immigration policies, particularly concerning the treatment of unaccompanied minors crossing the border.
The Associated Press reported on Friday that authorities are offering $2,500 to migrant children aged 14 and older as an incentive to voluntarily return to their countries of origin. In a related matter, a different federal judge last month stopped efforts to deport Guatemalan minors who had entered the U.S. alone, some of whom were already on planes during a nighttime operation when the judge intervened.
Michelle Lapointe, an attorney with the American Immigration Council, described these measures as strategies to pressure immigrant youth into relinquishing their right to seek asylum in the U.S. Her comments followed a legal filing requesting Judge Contreras to take action, which was promptly initiated after midnight on Saturday.
Unaccompanied minors typically reside in shelters managed by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, separate from ICE’s jurisdiction. Judge Contreras’ order from 2021 mandates the release of minors who turn 18 to “the least restrictive setting available,” aligning with federal law, provided they do not pose a danger to themselves or others and are not considered a flight risk. These young individuals are frequently released to relatives or, in some cases, placed in foster care.
But lawyers who represent unaccompanied minors said they began getting word in the last few days that ICE was telling shelters that children who were about to turn 18 — even those who had already-approved release plans — could no longer be released and would instead be taken to detention facilities, possibly as early as Saturday. One email from ICE asserted that the new adults could only be released by ICE under its case-by-case parole authority for “urgent humanitarian reasons” or “significant public benefit.” From March through September, ICE has paroled fewer than 500 people overall.
The plaintiffs argued that “release on parole is all but a dead letter” and that children aging out of shelters would experience lasting harm from unnecessary and inappropriate adult detention” in jails that might be overcrowded or in remote locations. The plaintiffs said that was especially true because some of the clients they cited had been victims of trafficking or had been abused, neglected or abandoned by their parents.
U.S. border authorities have arrested children crossing the border without parents more than 400,000 times since October 2021. A 2008 law requires them to appear before an immigration judge before being returned to their countries.
Children have been spending more time in government-run shelters since the Trump administration put them under closer scrutiny before releasing them to family in the United States to pursue their immigration cases.
The additional scrutiny includes fingerprinting, DNA testing and home visits by immigration officers. Over the summer, immigration officers started showing up and arresting parents.
The average length of stay at government-run shelters for those released in the U.S. was 171 days in July, down from a peak of 217 days in April but well above 37 days in January, when Trump took office.
