A federal judge sided with immigrant advocates in a ruling Wednesday that forces the U.S. government to stop returning to Mexico and Central America thousands of unaccompanied migrant children who have arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border amid the coronavirus pandemic.
U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan for the District of Columbia ruled that the Trump administration may no longer immediately expel children who have shown up at the border without a parent. The American Civil Liberties Union and other progressive groups sued on the basis that the move violated international and U.S. policies that protected minors who showed up alone at the border on the basis that they may be trafficking victims.
“This policy was sending thousands of young children back to danger without any hearing,” ACLU’s top lawyer overseeing the lawsuit, Lee Gelernt, said in a statement.
Sullivan’s preliminary injunction comes after at least 8,800 children have been removed from the United States, including being sent to countries that they are not from, the New York Times reported earlier this month. The ACLU estimated 13,000 children were deported. U.S. Customs and Border Protection will no longer be allowed to return children before they can make an asylum claim or have been permitted due process under trafficking laws.
Last spring, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended CBP immediately expel to Mexico all illegal immigrants taken into custody by Border Patrol, whose agents arrest people who trespass into the U.S. The move was meant to keep Border Patrol stations where detainees are normally held several days from holding people in closed quarters during the pandemic.
In total, CBP data reveal that the government has expelled from the border 147,000 people since March.
