A top civil rights organization has filed a class action lawsuit against the Trump administration, seeking the release of thousands of unaccompanied migrant children who continue to remain under U.S. custody—some now for months—due to official policy that has intentionally prolonged their detention and resulted in the immigration arrests of potential sponsors.
The lawsuit, filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), details the Trump administration policy of sharing sponsor information with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which led to the arrests of at least 170 people. Other potential sponsors were frightened off, eventually leading to a record number of kids—nearly 15,000—under U.S. custody.
One plaintiff in the lawsuit, a 14-year-old named “M.C.L,” fled Mexico after she was threatened at gunpoint. “The teen hoped to rejoin her mother in San Fernando. Instead, she was taken to a shelter in Florida, a 2,350-capacity facility that was not subject to state licensure and corresponding child welfare inspections.” Following the closure of the prison camp in Tornillo, Texas, the Homestead, Florida, prison camp has become “the largest children’s detention facility in the nation.”
While the administration eventually backed down from the “unprecedented” policy late last year, there’s still a massive number of detained kids who have yet to be released to a family member or other sponsor. “We have over 10,000 children in custody right now because this administration is using them as bait,” said Mary Bauer of SPLC’s Immigrant Justice Project. “This deplorable, deliberate policy means that these children are languishing in detention for months at a time.”