Trump administration seeks to overturn 40-year-old injunction protecting unaccompanied migrant children

The Trump administration petitioned the Ninth Circuit to scrap a decades-old injunction that obliges immigration officers to advise unaccompanied minor migrants of their legal rights and permit contact with relatives or attorneys before they sign a voluntary departure form. The appeal comes after a Los Angeles federal judge rejected the Justice Department’s bid to terminate the order, emphasizing that the 2008 Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, not the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, dictates the treatment of these children.

In Pasadena, Judges Patrick Bumatay and Lawrence VanDyke, appointed by Donald Trump, pressed the children’s counsel, while Judge Salvador Mendoza Jr., a Biden appointee, challenged the government’s stance. The panel debated whether the 1986 injunction directly affects the 1996 law or merely has a collateral impact, citing a recent Ninth Circuit decision that upheld a similar class-wide injunction despite some effect on the 1996 provisions.

The original order stemmed from a class action alleging that detained children were coerced into signing expedited return forms, a practice public-interest lawyers say persists in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley. The ruling will influence how immigration officials nationwide handle unaccompanied minors.