ICE unlawfully jails unaccompanied migrant children once they turn 18, judge rules
A federal judge ruled Thursday that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has unlawfully transferred thousands of unaccompanied children who turned 18 to adult detention facilities without considering alternatives, in violation of a 2013 law.
U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras of Washington, D.C., said he will order changes “in the near future” after a bench trial in a class-action lawsuit brought in March 2018 on behalf of immigrant teenagers by the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC).
Contreras found that ICE does not train field offices to search for or select less restrictive options than contractor or ICE prisons and jails for minors aging out of refugee resettlement facilities, and in fact guides officers to act contrary to a law protecting trafficking victims.
As a result, the judge ruled, many officers choose not to review minors’ files, contact group homes or shelters, or respond to their attorneys suggesting alternatives. Many of ICE’s largest field offices “nearly automatically” send minors to adult jails, even when in extreme cases their parents in the United States or other sponsors would take them, the judge wrote.
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