Civil Rights Group Challenges ‘Indefinite Detention’ of Immigrant Children by Trump Govt

The New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) on Feb. 20 filed a lawsuit against the Donald Trump administration in Manhattan federal court for “prolonged detention of immigrant children,” Reuters reported. The civil rights group, while blaming the shifting U.S. government immigration policies, wants to represent a class of children in the custody of Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) in New York.

According to the group, there are 40 such children in custody of the federal agency. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which is ORR’s parent agency, has declined to make a statement. The children in the custody of ORR were arrested by authorities while entering the U.S. without an adult. As per the U.S law, children with relatives or other adults in the country, who are qualified to take care of them, have to be released while their immigration cases are adjudicated.

The lawsuit presents the case of 17-year-old boy identified as LVM. The boy came to U.S. from El Salvador, running away from gang violence, along with his mother and brother in 2016. The family applied for an asylum and was residing in Long Island.

As per the lawsuit, LVM was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in July 2017 based on police reports of his alleged involvement with the MS-13 gang. The NYCLU claimed the police reports were false.

Even now, LVM is in ORR custody. This is after immigration judge and a local ORR supervisor have said that the 17-year-old poses no threat, the lawsuit said. LVM, who has no criminal record and no gang involvement, has been detained and separated from his mother for over seven months, the NYCLU release said.

“The Trump Administration is trapping children, many of whom came to New York to escape trauma and violence, in purgatory, separating them from their families and upending their lives,” said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the NYCLU in a release. “It is bad enough to arrest kids based on flimsy evidence, but it’s hard to fathom the cruelty of keeping them locked up even after the government’s own judges and caseworkers have said they should go home.”

According to NYCLU, LVM’s prolonged detention is because of a change in policy that was implemented in June 2017 by Scott Lloyd, who was appointed to head the ORR by the Trump administration. In this new policy, Lloyd personally signs off on all decisions to reunite children in custody of ORR with their families.

The civil rights group said that since the new policy, Lloyd has approved of only a “handful” of releases. Before this policy was implemented, children would only be in ORR custody for one to three months, the lawsuit said. “In a sharp break from the laws and policies intended to protect these vulnerable children, the Trump administration has vilified and targeted them,” the lawsuit reads.

Curbing immigration and deporting immigrants living illegally in the United States has been a core part of the Trump administration since the election of Republican President Donald Trump. “The Trump administration has completely subverted the laws designed to protect vulnerable immigrant children in the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement,” Paige Austin, lead counsel and staff attorney at the NYCLU said in a statement. “Now, long after they should be reunited with their families, immigrant teens are being indefinitely detained while they wait for Trump administration officials to sign off on their release.”

The NYCLU, on the other hand, looks to represent a class of “all children who are or will be in the custody of ORR in New York” in secure facilities. This is not the first case they have raised against ORR. In December 2017, they challenged the four-year detention of a 15-year-old boy, identified as JMRM by ORR. The ORR was stalling his release because he had spent time in a staff-secure facility a year and a half earlier for behavioral issues that stemmed from poorly-supported mental health and past trauma. ORR released him following the group’s lawsuit.