other support<\/a>.<\/p>\nCourt documents show DHS was presenting children with the option to self-deport, along with threats of prosecution and prolonged detainment if they refused, before they were transferred to ORR and guaranteed the chance to speak with an attorney.<\/p>\n
Fitzgerald wrote that presenting this ultimatum to children violated the 1986 court order.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is difficult to imagine a scenario more coercive than the one faced by [unaccompanied immigrant children] in the 72 hours before they are transferred into ORR custody,\u201d Fitzgerald wrote in court documents, \u201cparticularly for noncitizen children who likely do not know whether they possess any rights at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to evidence presented in court, children were told that if they did not accept voluntary deportation, they would be detained \u201cfor a prolonged period of time\u201d and if they turned 18 years old while in custody they would \u201cbe turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for removal.\u201d<\/p>\n
They were also told they may be \u201cbarred from legally applying for a visa\u201d and that their sponsor in the U.S. \u201cmay be subject to criminal prosecution\u201d if they didn\u2019t agree to voluntary deportation.<\/p>\n
This information was read to children or presented to them in a document DHS called the \u201cUAC Pathway Processing Advisal\u201d, but Rosenbaum told LAist he sees even the document\u2019s name as misleading.<\/p>\n
\u200a\u201dIt wasn’t an advisal, it was a coercive document,\u201d Rosenbaum said. The government has admitted it used the document since September 2025, according to the court order that now bans its use.<\/p>\n
How did it come to this?<\/p>\n
Rosenbaum said that after the 1986 court order, which also requires unaccompanied children to be allowed telephone access to relatives or legal support, organizations like Public Counsel and \u200athe National Immigration Law Center monitored the government\u2019s compliance with the order.<\/p>\n
Other than a few exceptions, he said, the injunction had been followed until recent years.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u200a\u200aWhen the Trump administration began its immigration activities in the second term of the president, \u200athat all changed,\u201d Rosenbaum said, \u201cand it changed in a hurry.\u201d<\/p>\n
Court records show that DHS notified the court last November that they would be asking for the 1986 court ordered protections for children in the department\u2019s custody to be ended. When organizations monitoring compliance with the order saw this, Rosenbaum said they investigated and found that in nearly all circumstances, children were no longer allowed to talk to lawyers and were being coerced to take voluntary departures from the country.<\/p>\n
Despite the court order, Rosenbaum said, children were \u201cseparated from family, separated from their communities and separated from their constitutional rights.\u201d<\/p>\n
How to reach me<\/p>\n
If you have a tip, you can reach me on Signal. My username is \u00a0jrynning.56.<\/p>\n
Peter McGraw, deputy legal director at the National Immigration Law Center, told LAist that the court order was issued to specifically protect children\u2019s Fifth Amendment rights to due process.<\/p>\n
He said that when unaccompanied children arrive in the U.S., they don\u2019t have an adult there with them to help them understand their decisions about whether to pursue a number of protections that may keep them from being deported.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u200aWhat due process requires is that the government provide children with notice of their ability to apply for asylum or for other protections \u2014 withholding from removal or protection from removal under the convention against torture \u2014 to ensure that they are not sent back to countries where they would be in danger,\u201d McGraw said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A federal judge ordered the Department of Homeland Security to stop using \u201ccoercive\u201d and threatening language to convince…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":367962,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[134,554,555,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-371209","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-mental-health","10":"tag-mentalhealth","11":"tag-new-zealand","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/367962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}