Advocacy groups accuse Trump administration of fast-tracking migrant children's asylum cases
Immigrant advocacy groups representing migrant children have sued the Trump administration to stop what they call a "cruel and unlawful scheme" to fast-track migrant children's asylum cases.
In a complaint filed Thursday night, the groups allege that new government policies have transformed the asylum process for migrant children into a "deportation assembly line depriving them of their rights."
The lawsuit comes as immigration attorneys and advocates say unaccompanied migrant children are being rushed through the immigration system and that their deportations have been accelerated as part of the Trump administration's aggressive immigration crackdown.
"A system that moves faster and that is by design made so that children are unable to access lawyers and are railroaded into deportation orders is not justice. It's assembly line deportation of the most vulnerable among us," said Lindsay Toczylowski, co-founder of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, during a press call.
The groups said unaccompanied children are facing rushed hearings, difficulty finding lawyers, and accelerated removal orders, including in cases involving alleged human trafficking and threats of violence.
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment from ABC News.
In the suit, the groups said that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has changed practices through a series of recent policy shifts that include reducing notice times for asylum interviews -- in some cases proving less than 24 hours' notice.
In the complaint, the groups also said that the Department of Justice has instructed immigration judges to complete all removal proceedings for detained unaccompanied children by Jan. 31, 2027. To meet the deadline, the groups allege that immigration judges are refusing to grant continuances of longer than three weeks.
"This push isn't coming from just one agency. It's a coordinated whole-of-government operation that abandons due process and child safety in service of faster removals," said Jason Boyd, vice president for federal policy at the advocacy group Kids in Need of Defense.
The suit comes two days after the Department of Homeland Security announced it was offering unaccompanied migrant children $3,000 to self-deport, a $500 increase over last year's incentive.
Earlier this month, the federal government quietly assembled a team of government attorneys to represent migrant children in court after the administration cut ties with a number of immigration advocacy groups that had previously provided those services.
Immigration advocacy groups have raised concerns about the initiative, arguing that the same government seeking to deport the minors should not be representing them in court.
