The American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia filed a class action lawsuit in Alexandria federal court today, alleging that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is unlawfully detaining young immigrants who have a legal pathway to citizenship — part of what the complaint describes as the Trump administration’s mass deportation strategy.
The lawsuit, filed in the Alexandria division of the Eastern District of Virginia at the Albert V. Bryan U.S. Courthouse, challenges ICE’s detention of unaccompanied minors who entered the United States after being abused, neglected, or abandoned by their parents — young people who federal law protects from detention.
“Our clients are young people whose parents abused, neglected, or abandoned them,” said Eden Heilman, ACLU-VA’s legal director. “A court ruled they cannot safely return to their home countries, that they have nowhere else to go, and that they have every legal right to be in the United States. How could ICE possibly justify picking up orphaned children and then warehousing them in a detention center?”
“The four named plaintiffs in Sarmiento et al. v. Crawford et al. were living in Newport News, Culpeper, and Washington, D.C., when they were apprehended by ICE in late August. Two brothers from El Salvador were arrested in Newport News on Aug. 21, a man from Honduras was apprehended in Stafford on Aug. 22, and another man from Honduras was arrested outside his D.C. home on Aug. 21. All have successfully applied for or been granted Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, a pathway to citizenship established by Congress in 1990 specifically for vulnerable minors who cannot safely return to their home countries.”
Two brothers from El Salvador had been living with their aunt in Newport News, where they attended high school and played bass guitar and drums at the Church of God Emmanuel. Another plaintiff from Honduras had lived in Culpeper for seven years with his adult brother and is expecting his first child in November. A fourth plaintiff from Honduras had just graduated from high school in Washington, D.C., and planned to attend college on scholarship when he was arrested outside his home.
All four are now being held at the Farmville and Caroline detention facilities in Virginia. The lawsuit seeks to represent a class of potentially hundreds or thousands of similar cases.
In early September, immigration judges at the Annandale Immigration Court initially granted bond to the plaintiffs, setting amounts ranging from $2,000 to $5,000. However, within days, the judges reversed those decisions, stating that they no longer had jurisdiction to consider the bond under a new federal policy. One of those judges was subsequently fired on Sept. 24.
The policy shift stems from a July 8, 2025, Department of Homeland Security directive instructing ICE employees to treat anyone who entered the country without inspection as subject to mandatory detention, effectively eliminating bond hearings for this population. This marked a reversal of decades of practice in which people who entered without inspection but were later apprehended were generally eligible for bond consideration.
According to the complaint, immigration officials requested this new policy after Congress appropriated billions of dollars to expand the immigration detention system, giving ICE the capacity to detain more than twice as many people. The policy is “reportedly in furtherance of the administration’s mass deportation strategy by seeking to coerce noncitizens to relinquish any relief from deportation they may be entitled to,” the complaint states.
The Office of Refugee Resettlement released 6,214 unaccompanied minors to sponsors in Virginia in fiscal year 2022 alone, according to government data cited in the complaint.
To obtain Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, minors must first be released by the Office of Refugee Resettlement into the care of a sponsor. The sponsor must then obtain custody from a state judge, who must determine that the child cannot go back to their country of origin. Only then can the minor apply for SIJS, and the wait for a visa typically takes years — after which they must still apply for citizenship. The entire process can take more than six years.
“Our clients are following the rules they’ve been given to obtain citizenship. Unfortunately, ICE is not,” said Sophia Gregg, ACLU-VA senior immigrants’ rights attorney. “Anti-trafficking laws and SIJS both protect unaccompanied minors from being held without access to bond in immigration detention centers. But ICE is ignoring the process — ultimately causing the very chaos and confusion the Trump administration claims it’s working to fix.”
The lawsuit argues the detentions violate the Immigration and Nationality Act, the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008, implementing regulations, and the Fifth Amendment’s due process protections. The complaint also cites ICE’s Washington Field Office in Chantilly as a location where violations occurred.
ICE and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The lawsuit comes as the Eastern District of Virginia office has been roiled by recent turmoil, including the firing of senior prosecutors and the ouster last month of U.S. Attorney Erik Siebert, who President Donald Trump nominated.
The ACLU-VA is co-counseling the case with attorneys Taniska Cruz of Cruz Law, PLLC, and Patrice Kopistansky. Additional ACLU-VA attorneys on the case include Vishal Agraharkar and Geri Greenspan.
This is not the first time the ACLU-VA has challenged ICE detention practices under the Trump administration. In August, the organization alleged ICE was breaking the law at a Virginia holding facility.
