migrant child

A federal judge has temporarily blocked a new Trump administration policy to keep migrant children in detention after they turn 18, moving quickly to stop transfers to adult facilities that advocates said were scheduled for this weekend.

U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras on Saturday issued a temporary restraining order to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement not to detain any child who came to the country alone and without permission in ICE adult detention facilities after they become an adult.

The Washington, D.C., judge found that such automatic detention violates a court order he issued in 2021 barring such practices.

ICE and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security didn’t immediately respond Saturday to emails seeking comment.

The push to detain new adults is yet another battle over one of the most sensitive issues in President Trump’s hard-line immigration agenda — how to treat children who cross the border unaccompanied by adults.

The Associated Press reported Friday that officials are offering migrant children age 14 and older $2,500 to voluntarily return to their home countries. Last month a separate federal judge blocked attempts to immediately deport Guatemalan migrant children who came to the U.S. alone back to their home country. Some children had been put on board planes in that late-night operation before a judge blocked it.

“All of these are pieces of the same general policy to coerce immigrant youth into giving up their right to seek protection in the United States,” said Michelle Lapointe, a lawyer for the American Immigration Council, one of the groups that asked Contreras to intervene in a filing made early Saturday, just after midnight.

Unaccompanied children are held in shelters run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which isn’t part of ICE. Contreras’ 2021 order instructed federal officials to release minors who turn 18 from those shelters to “the least restrictive setting available.” He ruled that that is what’s required by federal law as long as the minor isn’t a danger to themselves or others and isn’t a flight risk. Minors are often released to the custody of a relative, or maybe into foster care.

But lawyers who represent unaccompanied minors said they began getting word in the last few days that ICE was telling shelters that children who were about to turn 18 — even those who had already-approved release plans — could no longer be released and would instead be taken to detention facilities, possibly as early as Saturday. One email from ICE asserted that the new adults could only be released by ICE under its case-by-case parole authority for “urgent humanitarian reasons” or “significant public benefit.” From March through September, ICE has paroled fewer than 500 people overall.

The plaintiffs argued that “release on parole is all but a dead letter” and that children aging out of shelters would experience lasting harm from unnecessary and inappropriate adult detention” in jails that might be overcrowded or in remote locations. The plaintiffs said that was especially true because some of the clients they cited had been victims of trafficking or had been abused, neglected or abandoned by their parents.

U.S. border authorities have arrested children crossing the border without parents more than 400,000 times since October 2021. A 2008 law requires them to appear before an immigration judge before being returned to their countries.

Children have been spending more time in government-run shelters since the Trump administration put them under closer scrutiny before releasing them to family in the United States to pursue their immigration cases.

The additional scrutiny includes fingerprinting, DNA testing and home visits by immigration officers. Over the summer, immigration officers started showing up and arresting parents.

The average length of stay at government-run shelters for those released in the U.S. was 171 days in July, down from a peak of 217 days in April but well above 37 days in January, when Trump took office.

Amy writes for the Associated Press.

McALLEN, Texas — The Trump administration said Friday that it would pay migrant children $2,500 to voluntarily return to their home countries, dangling a new incentive in efforts to persuade people to self-deport.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement didn’t say how much migrants would get or when the offer would take effect, but the Associated Press obtained an email to migrant shelters saying children 14 years of age and older would get $2,500 each. Children were given 24 hours to respond.

The notice to shelters from the U.S. Health and Human Services Department’s Administration for Families and Children did not indicate any consequences for children who decline the offer. It asked shelter directors to acknowledge the offer within four hours.

ICE said in a statement that the offer would initially be for 17-year-olds.

“Any payment to support a return home would be provided after an immigration judge grants the request and the individual arrives in their country of origin,” ICE said. “Access to financial support when returning home would assist should they choose that option.”

Advocates said the sizable sum may prevent children from making informed decisions.

“For a child, $2,500 might be the most money they’ve ever seen in their life, and that may make it very, very difficult for them to accurately weigh the long-term risks of taking voluntary departure versus trying to stay in the United States and going through the immigration court process to get relief that they may be legally entitled to,” Melissa Adamson, senior attorney at the National Center for Youth Law, said in response to the plans Friday.

ICE dismissed widespread reports among immigration lawyers and advocates that it was launching a much broader crackdown Friday to deport migrant children who entered the country without their parents, called “Freaky Friday.”

Gonzalez writes for the Associated Press.

LONDON — A new mural by elusive street artist Banksy showing a judge beating an unarmed protester with a gavel has appeared outside a London court.

The mural depicts a protester lying on the ground holding a blood-splattered placard while a judge in a traditional wig and black gown beats him with a gavel. Banksy posted a photo of the work Monday on Instagram, his usual method of claiming a work as authentic. It was captioned “Royal Courts Of Justice. London.”

While the artwork does not refer to a particular cause or incident, activists saw it as a reference to the U.K. government’s ban on the group Palestine Action. On Saturday almost 900 people were arrested at a London protest challenging the ban.

Defend Our Juries, the group that organized the protest, said in a statement that the mural “powerfully depicts the brutality unleashed” by the government ban. “When the law is used as a tool to crush civil liberties, it does not extinguish dissent, it strengthens it,” the statement said.

Security officials outside the courthouse covered the mural Monday with sheets of black plastic and two metal barriers, and it was being guarded by two officers and a CCTV camera.

Banksy began his career spray-painting buildings in Bristol, England, and has become one of the world’s best-known artists. His paintings and installations sell for millions of dollars at auction and have drawn thieves and vandals.

Banksy’s work often comments on political issues, with many of his pieces criticizing government policy on migration and war.

At the Glastonbury Festival last year, an inflatable raft holding dummies of migrants in life jackets was unveiled during a band’s headline set. Banksy appeared to claim the stunt, which was thought to symbolize small boat crossings of migrants in the Channel, in a post on Instagram.

The artist has also taken his message on migration to Europe.

In 2019, “The Migrant Child,” depicting a shipwrecked child holding a pink smoke bomb and wearing a life jacket, was unveiled in Venice. A year prior, a number of works including one near a former center for migrants that depicted a child spray-painting wallpaper over a swastika were discovered in Paris.

Banksy has also created numerous artworks in the West Bank and Gaza Strip over the years, including one depicting a girl conducting a body search on an Israeli soldier, another showing a dove wearing a flak jacket, and a masked protester hurling a bouquet of flowers. He also designed the “Walled Off Hotel” guesthouse in Bethlehem, which closed in October 2023.

Last summer, Banksy captured London’s attention with an animal-themed collection, which concluded with a mural of a gorilla appearing to hold up the entrance gate to London Zoo.

For nine days straight Banksy-created creatures — from a mountain goat perched on a building buttress to piranhas circling a police guard post to a rhinoceros mounting a car — showed up in unlikely locations around the city.

Doye writes for the Associated Press.

A legal aid group has sued to preemptively block any efforts by the U.S. government to deport a dozen Honduran children, saying it had “credible” information that such plans were quietly in the works.

The Arizona-based Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project, known as FIRRP, on Friday added Honduran children to a lawsuit filed last weekend that resulted in a judge temporarily blocking the deportation of dozens of migrant children to their native Guatemala.

In a statement, the organization said it had received reports that the U.S. government will “imminently move forward with a plan to illegally remove Honduran children in government custody as soon as this weekend, in direct violation of their right to seek protection in the United States and despite ongoing litigation that blocked similar attempted extra-legal removals for children from Guatemala.”

FIRRP did not immediately provide the Associated Press with details about what information it had received about the possible deportation of Honduran children. The amendment to the organization’s lawsuit is sealed in federal court. The Homeland Security Department did not immediately respond to email requests for comment Friday and Saturday.

Over Labor Day weekend, the Trump administration attempted to remove Guatemalan children who had come to the U.S. alone and were living in shelters or with foster care families in the U.S.

Advocates who represent migrant children in court filed lawsuits across the country seeking to stop the government from removing the children, and on Sunday a federal judge stepped in to order that the kids stay in the U.S. for at least two weeks.

Children began crossing the border alone in large numbers in 2014, peaking at 152,060 in the 2022 fiscal year. July’s arrest tally translates to an annual clip of 5,712 arrests, reflecting how illegal crossings have dropped to their lowest levels in six decades.

Guatemalans accounted for 32% of residents at government-run holding facilities last year, followed by Hondurans, Mexicans and Salvadorans. A 2008 law requires children to appear before an immigration judge with an opportunity to pursue asylum, unless they are from Canada and Mexico. The vast majority are released from shelters to parents, legal guardians or immediate family while their cases wind through court.

The lawsuit was amended to include 12 children from Honduras who have expressed to the Florence Project that they do not want to return to Honduras, as well as four additional children from Guatemala who have come into government custody in Arizona since the suit was initially filed last week.

Some children have parents who are already in the United States.

The lawsuit demands that the government allow the children their legal right to present their cases to an immigration judge, have access to legal counsel and be placed in the least restrictive setting that is in the best interest of the child.

Willingham writes for the Associated Press.