A federal judge in Alexandria this week ordered the release of three young male immigrants from United States custody as part of a class action lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia.
In the case Sarmiento et al. v. Perry et al., it was announced Tuesday that two brothers from El Salvador, ages 19 and 20, were ordered to be released by U.S. District Court Judge Anthony J. Trenga, following their ICE arrests in Stafford County this past August.
On Wednesday, the ACLU of Virginia announced a third male plaintiff was ordered to be released from ICE custody.
The plaintiffs arrived in the United States as unaccompanied minors through a legal designation called Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, a pathway for “vulnerable minors who entered the U.S. and were abused, abandoned, or neglected,” according to the ACLU of Virginia.
“Our clients are following the rules they’ve been given to obtain citizenship,” ACLU of Virginia Senior Immigrants’ Rights Attorney Sophia Gregg said in a release. “By ignoring the legal process Congress established decades ago, ICE is causing the very chaos and confusion that the Trump administration claims it’s working to fix.”
The lawsuit filed last month alleges that four immigrants who emigrated to the United States as minors were unlawfully detained at Virginia’s Farmville or Caroline Detention Facilities.
The plaintiffs were granted bond in September, however the decisions were reversed within days due to a new federal policy.
In July, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued a directive stating that anyone who has entered the U.S. without documentation be arrested and denied bond eligibility, affecting millions of people.
According to the ACLU of Virginia:
The process for such children to become U.S. citizens is not easy. First, the Office of Refugee Resettlement must release the minor to the care of a sponsor. The sponsor then must get custody from a state judge, who must determine the child cannot go back to their country of origin. Only then can the minor even apply for SIJS, and the wait for a visa to become available usually takes years – after which the person must still apply to become a U.S. citizen…
All named plaintiffs in the ACLU of Virginia’s class action successfully applied for or were granted SIJS, yet were being held at Farmville or Caroline Detention Facility in Virginia. Unlike other noncitizens who enter the U.S., people who came to the U.S. as unaccompanied minors are not typically subject to detention. But under the Trump administration, the Department of Homeland Security is now unlawfully treating people with SIJS as arriving noncitizens who are subject to mandatory detention, and denying them bond hearings before an immigration judge – despite clear protections granted to them not only through SIJS, but also by anti-trafficking laws, the Immigration and Nationality Act, and the United States Constitution.
The ACLU of Virginia is co-counseling the case with attorneys Tanishka Cruz of Cruz Law, PLLC and Patrice Kopistanky.
ALXnow has reached out the ACLU for more on these cases.
