From the WashPost:
https://apple.news/AJGOptsSWSUqO9DzDOLgXaA
U.S. judge rules ICE unlawfully jails unaccompanied migrant children once they turn 18
BY SPENCER S. HSU
JULY 2 AT 5:18 PM
A federal judge ruled Thursday that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has unlawfully transferred thousands of unaccompanied children who turned 18 to adult detention facilities without considering alternatives, in violation of a 2013 law.
U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras of Washington, D.C., said he will order changes “in the near future” after a bench trial in a class-action lawsuit brought in March 2018 on behalf of immigrant teenagers by the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC).
Contreras found that ICE does not train field offices to search for or select less-restrictive options than contractor or ICE prisons and jails for minors aging out of refugee resettlement facilities, and in fact guides aofficers to act contrary to a law protecting trafficking victims.
As a result, the judge ruled, many officers choose not to review minors’ files, contact group homes or shelters, or respond to their attorneys suggesting alternatives. Many of ICE’s largest field offices “nearly automatically” send minors to adult jails, even when in extreme cases their parents in the United States or other sponsors would take them, the judge wrote.
“These are not the decisionmaking processes that Congress required” in the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act or federal rulemaking law, Contreras wrote in a 180-page opinion. “By failing to make decisions in the way Congress dictated, and based on the factors Congress identified as relevant, ICE fails to fulfill its obligations under the statute.”
The Justice Department did not have a comment, spokeswoman Alexa Vance said.
In a statement by plaintiffs, pro bono lead counsel Steve Patton of Kirkland & Ellis said: “This is a great victory for thousands of current and future unaccompanied immigrant children who turned 18 in government custody. We could not be happier with the court’s thorough and well-reasoned decision.”
. . . .
****************
Read the rest of Spencer’s article at the link.
While a majority of the Supremes seem committed to willfully furthering a program of racist-motivated human rights violations by the Trump kakistocracy, lower Federal Courts appear to be disassociating themselves from the Illegal activities and racist agenda of a lawless regime.
Due Process Forever!
PWS
O7-02-20