Trump Administration Illegally Keeping Young Immigrants From Their Families, Lawsuit Claims

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Donna Lieberman, executive director, NYCLU[/caption] Claiming the Trump administration has stopped following laws directed at reunifying detained immigrant children with their families, the New York Civil Liberties Union has sued on behalf of a Long Island teenager, originally from El Salvador and accused of being a gang member, who has been locked away for more than seven months. The class action lawsuit falls into a series of legal actions launched by the NYCLU over the last year that aim to combat what it says is the administration’s illegal treatment of undocumented immigrants. The lawsuit, filed last week and announced on Tuesday, claims there are at least 40 immigrant minors across New York State who are being held indefinitely by the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement and qualify to be part of the class. Lodged also as a petition for writ of habeas corpus, the suit seeks declaratory and injunctive relief and asks that the involved federal agencies be ordered to reunify the class members with their families or caretakers quickly. The federal action was lodged in the Southern District of New York. The lead plaintiff in the complaint, referred to only as L.V.M., is a 17-year-old allegedly taken from his home in July 2017 as part of the administration’s crackdown on those linked to the dangerous MS-13 street gang. But the NYCLU’s suit says he had no gang involvement and he was not flashing gang signs inside his Suffolk County high school when he was suspended by school officials. Rather, he was raising two middle fingers at a classmate, the suit says. Moreover, he has no criminal record and an immigration judge, a local ORR supervisor, and those running federal facilities where he’s been housed have concluded he poses no danger, according to the NYCLU. But L.V.M. has still not been released, and it took nearly five months before he received a December hearing before New York City federal immigration Judge Amiena Kahn. According to the civil liberties group, L.V.M. is actually being held as part of the administration’s political agenda targeting undocumented immigrants. And as a means of holding him and others, the suit says, the administration changed its policies last June to require that ORR director Scott Lloyd, a Trump appointee, or his deputy must sign off on the release of any immigrant minor nationwide who has been detained at a higher-level security facility. Since that policy change, Lloyd has released “only a handful” of the immigrant minors found in New York State, the NYCLU says. Meanwhile, it says, the administration has derided the laws aimed at reunifying minors with their families as containing “legal loopholes” that lead to more illegal immigration and peril for the public. “They’re painting immigrant children across the board as dangerous and gang affiliated, and as a result, they’re not complying with the requirement under the federal law that they promptly release the children to their families or caretakers,” said Paige Austin, an NYCLU staff attorney and lead counsel on the case, in a phone interview Tuesday. “The Trump administration has called those laws ‘loopholes,’ and is attempting to subvert their requirements.” Added Donna Lieberman, the NYCLU’s executive director, in a statement, “It is bad enough to arrest kids based on flimsy evidence, but it’s hard to fathom the cruelty of keeping them locked up even after the government’s own judges and caseworkers have said they should go home.” The ORR, which is an arm of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, did not return a phone call seeking comment for this report. A spokeswoman for HHS also did not return a call. In the case of L.V.M., he fled to the U.S. with his mother and younger brother in 2016 after gang members targeted him in El Salvador, according to the NYCLU. The family soon applied for asylum and is currently plodding through lengthy court proceedings. L.V.M.’s mother, Edith Esmeralda Mejia de Galindo, has said that until his arrest, her son had never spent a night away from her. She and the NYCLU have also denied the government’s allegations regarding his supposed MS-13 gang affiliation. For instance, they've said L.V.M. has no tattoos whatsoever, whereas the government has argued he has gang tattoos and has worn clothing that marked him as a gang member. Citing a patchwork of laws that began with a consent decree in the 1990s, the NYCLU outlined how protections for undocumented immigrant children have grown in the U.S. But the lawsuit then specifically claims that the Trump administration has violated the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008, which mandates that unaccompanied minors be freed from detention promptly and put in the least restrictive setting appropriate. The complaint also details the president’s and his administration’s own public statements about immigrant children as a threat, perhaps in a nod to recent DACA rulings that have pointed to such public statements as displaying bias. “Thousands of children who make the long and perilous journey to the United States each year are trauma survivors fleeing violence and persecution in their home countries,” the NYCLU suit states. But “in a sharp break from the laws and policies intended to protect these vulnerable children, the Trump administration has vilified and targeted them. “President Trump has said that large numbers of immigrant children are gang members and ‘animals’; Attorney General Sessions has described them as ‘wolves in sheep’s clothing’; and both men have denounced the laws that protect these children," the suit says. Austin noted that the class in the lawsuit is comprised of immigrant minors who have been housed in higher-security sights known as “staff secure” and “secure” facilities. Most of the 40 or so purported class members have been placed in higher-security detention based not on alleged gang affiliation, but on other issues, such as alleged disruptive behavior or mental health problems, she said, citing ORR statistics. She also noted that New York State has a “staff secure” facility but not a “secure” facility, although she said there are ex-"secure" facility immigrants now living in the state. Lloyd, the ORR director, has twice acknowledged the June policy change requiring him to sign off on the detention releases, Austin said. And both times came as he discussed immigrant children and their alleged ties to gangs, she said. “But he has not stated publicly what he is doing when he reviews these cases," she added. Nor has he defined the amount of time such reviews should take. He has also not said why he is personally reviewing the potential release of immigrant children not alleged to have gang ties, she said.