On Tuesday, a judge shot down the Trump administration’s efforts to throw out a decades-old court order protecting immigrant children from being intimidated into signing away their rights in ICE custody. Los Angeles District Court Judge Michael Fitzgerald rejected the administration’s move to do away with protections that require children the right to a conversation with a parent, relative, or legal representative before signing any kind of legal documents.
Public Counsel, one of the nonprofit law firms on the case, announced the win.
“This ruling is a victory, but it should not have been necessary,” Rebecca Brown, an immigrants’ rights attorney at Public Counsel said in the press release.
A cartoon by Mike Luckovich
Brown called the Trump administration’s efforts to do away with the order and replace it with their own procedures “part of a broader, deliberate effort to ensure that immigrant children face the most consequential decisions of their lives without anyone in their corner. We will not let that stand.”
The original ruling, Perez-Funez v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, began with a 1981 suit after immigrant children claimed they were being intimidated by agents into signing away their due process rights. At the time, 25 children took the stand to share how they were pressured.
Today, a similar story is being told. DHS advised their agents to warn children of “dire consequences, including prolonged detention and the potential criminal prosecution of their parents” if they sought legal representation or requested a hearing, the press release states. The new policy, which was introduced in September 2025, opened the door for Customs and Border Patrol agents to threaten and yell at young children, demanding they sign documents they didn’t fully understand, that could lead them to self-deport.
At the moment, this court order does not cover children from Mexico or Canada. But immigrant children, under the Trump administration’s deportation orders, are being detained and allegedly mistreated more than ever. Since starting his second term, more than 6,200 children have been detained.
In the now infamous Dilley Detention Center, in Texas, children have been hospitalized with dangerously low oxygen levels, while a 13-year-old reportedly attempted suicide. A 5-year-old nonverbal boy, who received national attention from his conversation with children’s entertainer Ms. Rachel, began hitting himself from the overwhelming stress.
Related | 911 calls reveal brutal condition for kids at Trump’s detention centers
Today, law firms are seeking to—at the very least—give these children their due process.
“Four decades ago, we went to court because the government was coercing children—alone, frightened, and without counsel—into signing away their rights. We won that fight,” Mark Rosenbaum, senior special counsel for Strategic Litigation at Public Counsel, said in the press release. Rosenbaum was present during the original trial.
“This ruling shows we will win this one too,” he added. “But the fact that we are here again, watching this administration try to dismantle protections that have safeguarded vulnerable children for forty years, tells you everything you need to know about how far it is willing to go to strip immigrants of the rights our Constitution guarantees them.”
