Advocacy groups sue over fast-tracking of unaccompanied migrant children's cases

Left · 1Immigrant advocacy groups representing migrant children filed a lawsuit on Thursday night against the Trump administration, calling its handling of unaccompanied children's asylum cases a "cruel and unlawful scheme". 1 Centre · 1Newsweek reports the suit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Maryland by six legal aid organizations, including the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, The Door, and the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project. 2 Mixed · 2The complaint says new policies have turned the process into a "deportation assembly line depriving them of their rights". 1 2

Mixed · 2The groups say U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has cut notice times for asylum interviews, in some cases to under 24 hours, and has scheduled more than 600 interviews for their child clients since August 1, many overlapping so attorneys cannot attend them all. 1 2 Mixed · 2They also allege that the Justice Department told immigration judges to complete all removal proceedings for detained unaccompanied children by Jan. 31, 2027, and that judges are refusing continuances longer than about three weeks; Newsweek describes the directive as a September memo covering all pending child asylum cases. 1 2 Centre · 1Attorney Neha Desai of Children's Human Rights & Dignity said children are now being ordered removed within a week or two of arriving because they have not yet filed an asylum claim, and that access to counsel is nearly impossible because of a lack of federal funding for attorneys. 2

Left · 1Lindsay Toczylowski of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center called it "assembly line deportation of the most vulnerable among us", and Jason Boyd of Kids in Need of Defense described a "coordinated whole-of-government operation". 1 Mixed · 2A Justice Department official said the department could not comment on ongoing litigation, but that hearings cannot be scheduled at short notice unless an attorney or immigrant requests it and that all cases were decided in accordance with applicable law; a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson had not responded when ABC News asked for comment. 2 1 Left · 1ABC News places the suit in the context of a DHS offer, announced two days earlier, of $3,000 to unaccompanied children to self-deport, and of a government attorney team assembled to represent children after the administration cut ties with advocacy groups that had provided that service. 1

Centre · 1Newsweek adds that the backlog of unaccompanied children's cases has fallen from a peak of 61,648 in fiscal 2021 to 16,560 by July, though about 60 percent of those pending had waited more than five years, so the dispute turns on whether faster processing addresses long delays or undermines protections Congress created. 2