ICE is unlawfully detaining people who came to the US as unaccompanied minors who were abused, neglected or abandoned

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – Today the ACLU of Virginia filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of four young people and a class of those in similar circumstances who Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) are unlawfully holding in Virginia detention centers, flagrantly ignoring federal laws that give these young immigrants a legal right to be in the United States.

“Our clients are young people whose parents abused, neglected, or abandoned them,” said ACLU-VA Legal Director Eden Heilman. “Federal law says that because they cannot safely return to their home countries and have nowhere else to go, they have every legal right to be in the United States. How could ICE possibly justify picking up young people who were orphaned children and then warehousing them in a detention center?”

Almost 40 years ago, Congress established a pathway to citizenship for vulnerable minors who entered the U.S. and were abused, neglected or abandoned, a legal designation called Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS).

The process for such children to become U.S. citizens is not easy. First, the Office of Refugee Resettlement must release the minor to the care of a sponsor. The sponsor then must get custody from a state judge, who must determine the child cannot go back to their country of origin. Only then can the minor even apply for SIJS, and the wait for a visa to become available usually takes years – after which the person must still apply to become a U.S. citizen.

All four named plaintiffs in today’s class action successfully applied for or were granted SIJS, yet are now being held at Farmville or Caroline Detention Facility in Virginia. Unlike other noncitizens who enter the U.S., people who came to the U.S. as unaccompanied minors are not typically subject to detention. But under the Trump administration, the Department of Homeland Security is now unlawfully treating people with SIJS as arriving noncitizens who are subject to mandatory detention, and denying them bond hearings before an immigration judge – despite clear protections granted to them not only through SIJS, but also by anti-trafficking laws, the Immigration and Nationality Act, and the United States Constitution.

"Our clients are following the rules they’ve been given to obtain citizenship. Unfortunately, ICE is not,” said ACLU-VA Senior Immigrants’ Rights Attorney Sophia Gregg. “Anti-trafficking laws and SIJS both protect people who came to the U.S. as unaccompanied minors from being held without access to bond in immigration detention centers. But ICE is ignoring the process – ultimately causing the very chaos and confusion the Trump administration claims it’s working to fix.”

The amended petition and class action complaint in Sarmiento et al. v. Perry et al., was filed in the Alexandria division of the Eastern District of Virginia. Today’s class action lawsuit argues that all four plaintiffs and a proposed class of others similarly situated are entitled to bond hearings and should be released from detention because they have sought or been granted SIJ status. The ACLU-VA is co-counseling this case with attorneys Taniska Cruz of Cruz Law, PLLC and Patrice Kopistanky.