Attorneys sue to restore deportation protections for abused and neglected migrant children
The lawsuit, filed in the Eastern District of New York, was filed on behalf of nine young people and their legal advocates who want a judge to keep the protections for up to nearly 150,000 beneficiaries.
'These young people have survived abuse, abandonment, and neglect only to be retraumatized now by the constant threat of detention and deportation from the same agencies that vowed to keep them safe," said Rachel Davidson, plaintiff attorney with the National Immigration Project.
The Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services were both named in the lawsuit. USCIS Spokesman Matthew J. Tragesser said, 'As a matter of practice, USCIS does not comment on pending litigation.' DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Migrant children who suffered parental abuse, neglect or abandonment are designated through state courts and the federal government with Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, which was created by Congress in 1990 with bipartisan support.
SIJS, as it is known, does not grant legal status. But it lets qualifying young people apply for a visa to become legal permanent residents and obtain a work permit. It can take years for a visa to become available due to annual caps. In 2022, the Biden administration allowed children to be shielded from deportation while waiting for a visa.
In June, the Trump administration ended deportation protection for SIJS beneficiaries. Without it, they can still wait in the U.S. for a visa but cannot receive work authorization. And if they are deported while they are waiting, they will no longer be eligible to become legal permanent residents.
Though overshadowed by higher-profile moves to end birthright citizenship and halt asylum at the border, the policy shift is part of President Donald Trump 's sweeping immigration system overhaul intended to make it more difficult for people to legally remain in the U.S.
A Guatemalan teen who is living in New York and living with her older brother is one of the plaintiffs. She said through attorneys, who omit using the names of minors, that her dreams of becoming an astronaut one day may be cut short if she's unable to continue high school for fear of deportation.
'I felt that I was finally in a safe environment, but if I had to return to (Guatemala), I would be very afraid of the violence and abuse from my mother and father,' she said in a statement shared by the attorneys without her name.
The policy shift may shut down a legal pathway to possible citizenship for nearly 150,000 migrants who attorneys estimate have received this classification and are stuck in the visa backlog.
It could keep them from obtaining Social Security cards, driver's licenses, medical treatment, health insurance, higher education, bank accounts, and, for older youth, legal and safe employment opportunities.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
Republicans tell Trump to ‘grow up' after he sacks data chief
Republicans have told Donald Trump to 'grow up' after he sacked the US government's top statistician over underwhelming jobs numbers. The president said on Friday he would remove Erika McEntarfer as commissioner of the Bureau of Labour Statistics (BLS) shortly after government figures indicated the economy was performing worse than expected. The move has prompted a rare backlash against Mr Trump from members of his own party. Cynthia Lummis, a Republican senator for Wyoming, told NBC News that deciding to sack Ms McEntarfer before establishing the accuracy of the employment figures was 'kind of impetuous'. 'If the president is firing the statistician because he doesn't like the numbers but they are accurate, then that's a problem,' she continued. 'It's not the statistician's fault if the numbers are accurate and that they're not what the president had hoped for.' Thom Tillis, who represents North Carolina, said: 'If she was just fired because the president or whoever decided to fire the director just did it because they didn't like the numbers, they ought to grow up'. In the past, Mr Trump has taken an uncompromising attitude to critics in his own party, publicly threatening to back primary challenges to replace them with loyalists. Mr Tillis said in June that he would not run for re-election. Rand Paul, a Kentucky senator and former presidential primary contender, raised concerns about the politicisation of government data. 'We have to look somewhere for objective statistics. When the people providing the statistics are fired, it makes it much harder to make judgments that you know, the statistics won't be politicised,' he said. 'I'm going to look into it, but [my] first impression is that you can't really make the numbers different or better by firing the people doing the counting.' Democrats have also condemned the president's move. Chuck Schumer, the party's leader in the Senate, criticised Mr Trump's 'shoot the messenger' response in a speech on Friday. Mr Trump has long been suspicious of the BLS, claiming last year that it inflated the jobs numbers during former president Joe Biden's administration in an attempt to swing the election for the Democrats. He announced via social media on Friday that he was sacking Ms McEntarfer, labelling her a 'Biden political appointee' even though she is a career civil servant and was confirmed by a bipartisan vote in January 2024. Among those who voted to confirm her were former senators JD Vance, now the US vice-president, and Marco Rubio, the secretary of state. Some Republicans have backed the president's move, including Roger Marshall, a Kansas senator, who was one of the 85 senators who confirmed her last year. 'Her cooked-up numbers have misled the American people for too long,' he claimed. The US created just 73,000 new jobs in July, considerably fewer than the predicted 110,000, while the figures for May and June were slashed by 258,000 combined, according to the BLS report released on Friday. Mr Trump hit out at the bureau as stock markets tumbled, branding the figures revision a 'major mistake' and adding: 'Important numbers like this must be fair and accurate, they can't be manipulated for political purposes.' Ms McEntarfer would be replaced with 'someone much more competent and qualified', he said, insisting the economy was 'BOOMING'. For now, BLS deputy commissioner William Wiatrowski is serving as acting commissioner.
Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Musk's latest venture blasted as 'vanity project for the wealthy'
By Nashville is getting a makeover all thanks to business mogul Elon Musk. Musk's Boring Company, has plans to build a massive underground tunnel in Tennessee and it seems he has the support of many major Tennessee lawmakers on a federal level, but not so much from local leaders. What one representative called a 'vanity project for the wealthy' has been dubbed the 'Music City Loop'. It will span 10 miles from city center to the airport on Nashville's south east corridor, its entrance just steps from the airport. The privately funded project will supposedly shuttle Tennesseans between downtown and the airport in only eight minutes. The company plans to use electric vehicles to connect city hotspots, similar to an already operating Boring system in Las Vegas . Musk and Boring Company seemed to have the full support of Republican lawmakers, who demonstrated their support at a press conference about the project on July 28. Republican Tennessee Governor Bill Lee attended, and expressed his excitement for the endeavor. 'They could have taken their next underground loop anywhere, but they saw something unique about Tennessee,' he said. 'The best part of all of it is it's 100 percent privately funded. There will be no cost to Tennessee taxpayers.' But, John Ray Clemens, chair of the Tennessee House Democratic Caucus, called the privately funded endeavor 'fiscally irresponsible and legally suspect'. 'No responsible executive would give away unrestricted and unlimited underground property rights to an unhinged billionaire, who Donald Trump doesn't even trust anymore, and grant him and his company exclusive access rights beneath our city and a monopoly to profit in perpetuity.' The project has yet to receive approval from the Metro Nashville Council or the mayor's office, and Nashville Mayor Freddie O'Connell was notably absent from the event. In a brief statement about the project, he said: 'We are aware of the state's conversations with The Boring Company, and we have a number of operational questions to understand the potential impacts on Metro and Nashvillians.' Yet, United States Senator Marsha Blackburn seemed to think the impact would be overwhelmingly positive. She posted on X that the company 'couldn't have picked a better new home for their state-of-the-art tunneling technology than Nashville'. She wrote: 'I look forward to seeing the tremendous impact of this investment in our city!' State Representative Aftyn Behn called the tunnel a 'privatization of public infrastructure,' noting that it was designed to benefit a select few 'not the people who actually live and work here'. In his press release about the 'Music City Loop' Behn wrote, 'It's a vanity project for the wealthy, and once again, the Lee administration is rolling out the red carpet for billionaires while working families are stuck in traffic.' 'We rank at the bottom in livability, and yet instead of investing in roads, schools and transit that benefit everyday Tennesseans, they're floating billion-dollar boondoggles for the ultra-rich,' stated state Senator Heidi Campbell The decision seems to be just as divisive among citizens as it is among local lawmakers. Many took to social media following the press conference to chime in with their opinions. Reacting to coverage of the press conference on Reddit , one user posted: 'And the grift continues. This isn't a much needed or desirable project. 'This is a grift meant to line the pockets of the world's richest person. The goal was never providing a decent or even acceptable transit service.' Another commented: 'Could've had a great light rail system and instead get this utter nonsense.'
The Independent
2 hours ago
- The Independent
Jack Smith under investigation by the Office of Special Counsel over Trump prosecutions
Former special counsel Jack Smith, the federal prosecutor who led two federal investigations into President Donald Trump, is being investigated by the Office of Special Counsel. Smith, who has long been targeted by Trump and allies for what they believe is weaponization of the justice system, is being investigated by the office for allegedly violating the Hatch Act, a law that prohibits federal employees from engaging in political activity. The Office of Special Counsel confirmed the inquiry into Smith to The Independent. That comes after Senator Tom Cotton of Alabama, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, requested that an investigation be opened into Smith on allegations that he intended to interfere with the 2024 presidential election by trying to speed up proceedings in Trump's election interference case. 'Jack Smith is a partisan Democrat who weaponized the law against President Trump to help Dems win,' Cotton wrote on X. 'I've asked the Office of Special Counsel to investigate his actions that likely violated the law to influence the election.' Smith is a registered independent voter. The Office of Special Counsel is an independent federal agency that safeguards the government's merit system by investigating allegations of wrongdoing and protects employees while whistleblowing. It is separate from the Justice Department office where Smith's special counsel status came from. The investigation into Smith is the latest move in the president's campaign of retribution against those whom he believes unfairly targeted him for political reasons. Trump has used his power as president to open investigations into people, revoke security clearances, and target businesses and institutions. In August 2023, Smith brought a four-count criminal indictment against Trump for his actions to overturn the 2020 election results in his favor. Smith had pushed for the trial to begin soon after the indictment was filed because the presidential election was coming up and Trump was running. Cotton claims that Smith's urgency is a sign that he was acting at the behest of Democrats to influence the election. No evidence has yet been brought forward to confirm Cotton's theory. Smith had investigated Trump for less than a year before bringing the indictment. He accused the president of pushing false claims of widespread voter fraud to try and convince the public that the election had been rigged in former president Joe Biden's favor, despite no evidence of mass voter fraud. Those claims incited Trump supporters who, at the direction of Trump, marched to the Capitol on January 6, 2021, to protest Congress's certification of election results. The mob turned angry and violent and physically stormed the Capitol that day, resulting in multiple deaths. The indictment claimed Trump and his allies engaged in a scheme to try and appoint fake electors in states with close races to certify the election in Trump's favor, even though he lost. Trump had denied all wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty to the charges, constantly railing against the indictments and Smith as corrupt and motivated by politics. Smith's case against Trump began seeing cracks after the Supreme Court ruled in the president's favor, awarding him vast immunity from criminal prosecutions in July 2024. Once Trump won the 2024 election in November, Smith moved to dismiss the case, saying there was a precedent not to prosecute a sitting president. shortly before Trump took office. The president had threatened to fire Smith as soon as he assumed power.
