Immigrant families separated under Trump’s policy are being detained again

Kousholy Ema: Some of the undocumented immigrants who were separated from their family members during President Donald Trump’s first term in office have been detained again and are being held in violation of a 2023 federal court settlement, the ACLU said in a court filing.

The American Civil Liberties Union asked a judge this week to order the release of seven people who have been taken into custody again and targeted for deportation after they were first incarcerated in 2018 during a widely condemned crackdown on crossings at the US southern border. The individuals have now been detained for periods ranging from a week to more than eight months, with most held for three or more months, said Lee Gelernt, an ACLU lawyer who is representing the immigrants. The ACLU said the government has provided weak justifications, or none at all, for holding the migrants. “Detaining these already-traumatized families is not only unlawful but shows a callous disregard for how the US government deliberately abused them in the past,” Gelernt said Thursday.

Representatives of the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement, had no immediate comment. The Justice Department didn’t respond to a request for comment. US District Judge Dana Sabraw in San Diego ordered an end to family separations by ICE in June 2018, days after Trump halted the practice himself amid an international backlash. Since then, Sabraw has overseen the reunification of thousands of immigrant children who were separated from their parents and other guardians. Under a December 2023 settlement, the government was barred from reviving the “zero tolerance” family separation policy for eight years. 

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In February, Sabraw chided the government after the ACLU accused ICE of deporting several immigrants covered by the settlement without legal justification. The judge found the removal of three immigrant families was unlawful and he ordered their return to the US. He directed the government to cover the expense of flying the immigrants back to the US and to explain why they were deported. ICE’s decision “to remove these families rendered the benefits of the settlement agreement illusory for these families,” Sabraw wrote in that order. “The manner in which each of these removals was affected, in addition to being unlawful, involved lies, deception, and coercion.”

The US had argued Sabraw lacked jurisdiction to order the return of the families but also said that certain families had departed the US “voluntarily.”

Gelernt said the ACLU reviewed the circumstances of 25 detentions and determined that seven violated the settlement. They include a father separated from his then-5-year-old daughter in 2017 who has been in ICE custody for more than five months after a traffic stop by the Florida Highway Patrol.

Another is a mother separated from her 15-year-old daughter in 2018 who has now been in federal custody for almost three months after she reported to ICE for a periodic check-in and was arrested on the spot. Under the terms of the 2023 settlement that covers 4,000 to 5,000 people ensnared in the 2018 crackdown, the government cannot deport someone solely because immigration authorities had previously approved their removal for being undocumented, Gelernt said. Minor offenses such as driving while intoxicated are also off-limits as grounds for removal, he said.

The ACLU said the government has refused to release the seven people, who were indentified in this week’s court filing only by their initials, nor has ICE responded to the rights group’s requests for more information.

Tom Homan served as the acting director of ICE during the early period of Trump’s first administration and was one of the architects of the family separation policy. Trump designated Homan as his “border czar” for his second term.

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