Judge rules that US must hold hearings for detained undocumented teens
A San Francisco federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to hold immediate hearings for undocumented teenagers who were living with relatives or friends in the United States when they were arrested in gang sweeps and sent to lockups in distant states.
The government previously found that the youths were not dangerous, a determination that allowed them to stay with a family member or other sponsor while awaiting deportation proceedings. Now the government must show that something has changed to justify their continued detention, U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria said Monday. Otherwise, he said, they must be released.
“When the federal government has previously deemed an unaccompanied minor suitable for placement in the community with a sponsor, and when federal agents later arrest and detain the minor based on allegations of gang affiliation, the government cannot simply ship the minor across the country and place him in a secure detention facility for an indefinite period,” Chhabria said.
The nationwide order currently applies to 16 teenagers in government custody, but that number is likely to grow. Chhabria said a government memo reported 58 beds now available, and a need for more, to hold undocumented minors in ongoing sweeps of alleged gang members.
His ruling requires immigration courts to hold a hearing within seven days of an arrest and determine whether a youth poses a danger to the community or is likely to flee if released. Those already in custody are entitled to hearings by next Wednesday.
“These boys were torn from their families,” said Julia Harumi Mass, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union in San Francisco, which represents the youths. “The Trump administration wrongfully denied them any opportunity to respond to the charges against them.”
She said immigration officials have accused some of the youths of having gang affiliations “because a police officer reports that they wear a certain color shirt or visit a pizza parlor frequented by a known gang member.”
Chhabria, too, said the government has based some of its gang allegations on sketchy evidence.
Some of the youths have been locked up for five months, and could have been held indefinitely had the courts not intervened, said Bill Freeman, another ACLU attorney.
Although the youths enin tered the country without legal documentation, Freeman said, federal law allows a minor to remain in the United States if he or she had been abandoned, abused or neglected by a parent in the youth’s homeland, and if a state court determines that deportation would not be in the youth’s best interest. They can also seek political asylum if they would face persecution in their home country.
The Department of Homeland Security declined to comment on the ruling.
The lead plaintiff, identified as A.H., fled an abusive father in Honduras and entered the U.S. by himself in 2015. The U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement held him for a month, then released him to live with his mother on Long Island, N.Y., for the duration of proceedings that will determine if he can remain in the country.
A.H. was arrested on a street near his mother’s home June during Operation Matador, a raid by immigration agents targeting undocumented youths suspected of gang membership. Early the next morning he was flown across the country to California, to the Yolo County Juvenile Detention Facility in Woodland, where he was placed in high security. A.H. since has been transferred to a medium-security facility in New York state. All criminal charges against him have been dismissed.
His lawsuit, a class action on behalf of other youths in immigration custody, was heard in San Francisco because the official overseeing the government’s contract with the Yolo County facility is based here.