ICE ordered to release young brothers who were unaccompanied minors and abused, abandoned, or neglected

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – Following a federal judge’s order that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) must grant bond hearings to plaintiffs in the class action lawsuit Sarmiento et al. v. Perry et al., an immigration judge ruled that ICE must release two young brothers whom the agency is unlawfully holding in a Virginia detention center.

“These young brothers came to the U.S. as unaccompanied minors and cannot safely return to their home countries after it was determined that they were abused, abandoned, or neglected,” said ACLU-VA Legal Director Eden Heilman. “Federal law says they have every legal right to be in the United States, and that ICE should never have put them in a detention center. Now they will finally be freed from detention and reunited with each other.”

Almost 40 years ago, Congress established a pathway to citizenship for vulnerable minors who entered the U.S. and were abused, abandoned, or neglected, 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 named plaintiffs in the ACLU of Virginia’s class action successfully applied for or were granted SIJS, yet were 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. The federal judge’s ruling last week confirmed that ICE is not,” said ACLU-VA Senior Immigrants’ Rights Attorney Sophia Gregg. “By ignoring the legal process Congress established decades ago, ICE is causing the very chaos and confusion that 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, and argued 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 SIJS.

The ACLU-VA is co-counseling this case with attorneys Taniska Cruz of Cruz Law, PLLC and Patrice Kopistanky.