Abandoned immigrant kids seek to restore deportation safeguards scrapped by Trump

BROOKLYN (CN) — The Trump administration quietly and illegally ended Biden-era protections for immigrant kids who were abused, neglected or abandoned by their parents, putting 150,000 youth at risk of deportation as they apply for permanent legal status — a process that can take years — according to a Thursday lawsuit in the Eastern District of New York.

“This is a case about broken promises with devastating consequences,” plaintiff attorney Rachel Davidson of the National Immigration Project said in a statement announcing the intended class action.

“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.”

In addition to deportation safeguards, the now-scrapped 2022 deferred action policy allowed youth with Special Immigrant Juvenile status to work legally in the U.S. while waiting in a lengthy backlog to apply for a green card.

Those protections are now gone. Two months after what the plaintiffs called a “sub silentio reversal” of the policy — referring to a decision that contradicts legal precedent — the government under President Donald Trump formally ended the program in a June 6 policy alert.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said it “will no longer conduct deferred action determinations for aliens with SIJ classification who cannot apply for adjustment of status solely because an immigrant visa is not immediately available.”

“While Congress likely did not envision that SIJ petitioners would have to wait years before a visa became available, Congress also did not expressly permit deferred action and related employment authorization for this population,” the agency said.

The termination is arbitrary and capricious, lacking adequate reasoning for the sudden reversal, according to the plaintiffs, who include nine formerly protected immigrant youth, identified by their initials out of fear of retaliation, as well as the organizations Central American Refugee Center and Centro Legal de la Raza.

“This vulnerable population is therefore left in a state of legal limbo that effectively withholds the protections that Congress designed for these young people through SIJS,” the plaintiffs wrote in the lawsuit seeking to reinstate the protections.

Congress created Special Immigrant Juvenile Status in 1990 under the Immigration and Nationality Act to protect immigrant minors who were abused, neglected or abandoned by a parent, offering them a path to permanent U.S. residency.

Thousands of beneficiaries have built lives in the U.S. around their deferred action status.

One of the named plaintiffs, identified as A.C.R., said her dream is to become an astronaut.

“Without the protection of deferred action, I won’t be able to attend school and pursue my dreams, and I’ll live in constant 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.

Another plaintiff, J.G.V., is still in high school and was counting on deferred action to work part-time and pay for training to work as a mechanic.

A third, Y.A.M., was kidnapped and assaulted in her country of origin, and fears for her own life and her son’s well-being. Without the ability to renew her deferred action, she fears losing her job and employer-provided health insurance — which means she won’t be able to afford medical care for a heart condition or recent surgery to remove a tumor on her breast.

The legal service organization plaintiffs say Trump’s order will require a dramatic increase of resources going toward immigration cases, forcing the groups to limit the number of clients they can take on.

Citizenship and Immigration spokesman Matthew J. Tragesser said the agency does not comment on pending litigation.

Follow @NinaPullano