The Trump administration is arresting numbers of vulnerable young immigrants who were promised temporary protection from deportation to give them time to establish permanent residency in the U.S.
A number of these arrestees are recipients of Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS), a classification designed to protect youths who’ve been victims of abuse, abandonment or neglect. Many also have received deferred action, a form of prosecutorial discretion that suspends any removal actions for a specified period of time.
It’s unknown how many people with SIJS status or SIJS deferred action have been arrested, but an immigration rights group says its received about 50 reports from immigration lawyers across the country.
“This is just a sampling of what’s happening across the country,’’ said Rachel L. Davidson, director of the End SIJS Backlog Coalition, a nationwide group of immigrant youth and advocates working to protect the rights of SIJS youth to remain safely in the United States.
Davidson said the arrests are illegal because they violate written pledges by the government to not take removal or deportation actions against deferred action recipients.
“What we’re seeing is that young people who have … deferred action are being detained and upon detention they are then terminating their deferred action in order to execute their deportation,’’ Davidson said. “Of course (that’s) not how it’s supposed work. But that’s the pattern that we’re seeing across the country right now,”.
Miguel had legal documents allowing him to stay in the U.S. ICE arrested him and locked him up anyway. Read the story.
The arrests include the May 5 detention of a Memphis man, “Miguel”, 22, who came here undocumented at age 11 with his father. He was enrolled as a teenager in the Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS) program, which offers a path to permanent legal residency to youths who have been victims of abuse, abandonment or neglect. In 2022, he received a grant of deferred action, a form of temporary prosecutorial discretion that is supposed to protect him from deportation until June 2026. Deferred action buys time for SIJS recipients to navigate the long backlog for obtaining a green card needed to establish permanent residency.
Despite those protections, Miguel spent five weeks in detention in Louisiana and now wears an electronic monitoring device on his ankle as he makes his case to remain in the U.S., according to interviews and court records reviewed by the Institute for Public Service Reporting. The Institute is using a pseudonym to protect his identity because he fears retaliation.
“This is, unfortunately, something that we are seeing happening very broadly,’’ said S. Ellie Norton, senior staff attorney with the National Immigration Project, a nationwide membership organization of attorneys, advocates, and community members.
“I have been litigating a number of individual habeas petitions for young people who (are) very similar to Miguel (in that they) were arrested and detained even though they still have deferred action.’’
Neither the Department of Homeland Security nor its Immigration and Customs Enforcement unit responded to a series of requests for comment on these stories.
The Trump administration has argued in court papers that deferred action does not provide lawful status and that ICE is within its authority to execute final orders of removal even when a term of deferred action hasn’t yet expired.
The administration also contends there is widespread abuse in the SIJS program. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said in a 36-page report in July that it had uncovered “significant national security and public safety concerns” within the SIJS program including the granting of protections to hundreds of “known or suspected” gang members.
But courts have sided against the government in a series of rulings this fall:
- U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty of the District Court of Western Louisiana last week ordered the release of Carlos Guerra Leon, 18, an SIJS recipient with deferred action who was arrested in August. A refugee who came to the U.S. from Guatemala when he was 10, he was shipped hundreds of miles from his home in Spring Valley, New York, to a detention facility in Louisiana. The ruling buys him more time in the U.S. but ultimately may not save him from deportation. “Petitioner may still be subject to removal in the future if his deferred action status is terminated before its expiration (in December 2026) or if it expires and is not renewed,’’ Judge Doughty ruled. “Respondents, however, have not terminated or sought to terminate Petitioner’s deferred action status. This makes Petitioner non-removable while his deferred action status remains in effect.”
- In a ruling Oct. 1, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone of the Western District of Texas ordered the release of Catalina Santiago, 28, who was arrested in August at the El Paso International Airport. A citizen of Mexico who came to the U.S. when she was eight and has lived here for 20 years, she is a recipient of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or DACA, the humanitarian program launched by former President Barrack Obama. The government’s “only stated interest in Santiago’s detention is to ‘seek a removal order against her,’ … and they concede that such removal order is inexecutable because Santiago is protected by DACA,’’ Judge Cardone wrote in her ruling. “As a result, there is ‘no legal basis to detain [her],’ and her immediate release is warranted.”
- Another DACA recipient, Paulo Cesar Gamez Lira, 28, was ordered released in September from a detention facility in New Mexico following his Aug. 13 arrest. Gamez Lira, a DACA recipient who came to the U.S. as an infant, was arrested in his driveway by seven plainclothes agents, reportedly as he prepared to take an infant child to a doctor’s appointment. In issuing a temporary restraining order on Sept. 5 that blocked Gamez Lira’s removal from the country, U.S. District Judge William P. Johnson found the government didn’t follow its own procedures to terminate Gamez Lira’s DACA status. Judge Johnson subsequently ordered Gamez Lira to be released on Sept. 24.
In a pending case, Joel Camas, 16, a high school junior with SIJS status, was arrested Oct. 23 during an ICE check-in in New York. He remains in detention.
His lawyers contend his attempted deportation violates “his statutory and constitutional rights.”
“For years, the government has recognized that SIJ status carries vested rights and a congressional guarantee of protection for vulnerable youth who cannot safely return to their countries of origin,” a team of attorneys wrote in an Oct. 27 petition for writ of habeas corpus in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Additionally, the petition contends Camas was approved for SIJS in April yet was “unlawfully denied consideration for deferred action in violation of (the government’s) own stated policy.” On June 6, the Department of Homeland Security announced it was rescinding a Biden-era policy granting deferred action to SIJS recipients, but that policy was not yet in effect when Camas received SIJS status, his attorneys say.
Camas now faces a Nov. 14 hearing.
His arrest has stirred wide criticism.
“ICE’s actions of arresting a child — with legal status reserved for particularly vulnerable minors — at a routine check-in is breathtakingly cruel and a clear violation of U.S. immigration law and the Constitution,” Elizabeth Gyori, senior staff attorney at the New York Civil Liberties Union said in a statement following Camas’ arrest.
Update: An earlier version of this story may have implied that the government is barred from initiating deportation proceedings against a noncitizen who has deferred action. While the government may initiate such proceedings, it arguably cannot detain or deport a person as long as a grant of deferred action remains in place.
