The Trump administration has turned the immigration system for unaccompanied immigrant children into a "deportation assembly line," according to a lawsuit filed Thursday by six legal aid organizations that say children are being given as little as 24 hours' notice before asylum interviews and are rushed through removal proceedings. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Maryland, offers one of the most detailed looks yet at what immigration attorneys describe as a sweeping effort by the federal government to accelerate asylum and deportation cases involving children, including an alleged new interview schedule process at U.S.
Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and court processing deadlines at the Department of Justice's (DOJ) Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR). Since President Donald Trump's return to office in January 2025, asylum has been even further restricted than it was at the end of the Biden administration, with little to no new entries and a higher rate of denials by immigration judges. Attorneys and advocates have repeatedly raised concerns about unaccompanied children still waiting to be processed, due to a lapse in funding for legal aid under the current administration.
"The United States guarantees unaccompanied children an immigration system that meets their unique needs. EOIR’s and USCIS’s new policies make those guarantees a hollow promise," plaintiffs wrote in their complaint. "This is not the immigration process that Congress intended for unaccompanied children; it is a deportation assembly line depriving them of their rights." Newsweek reached out to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for comment via email Friday morning.
A DOJ official said the department could not comment on ongoing litigation, but added that hearings could not be scheduled at short notice unless an attorney or immigrant requests it, and that all cases were decided in accordance with applicable law. The groups behind the lawsuit, including the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, The Door, and The Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project (FIRRP), allege that multiple federal agencies are illegally dismantling the rights of unaccompanied immigrant children. Their complaint argues that protections for this group, many set up by Congress around 20 years ago to help those who have experienced violence or abuse, speak little English, and lack parents or guardians, are being undone.
Neha Desai, one of the attorneys on the case from Children’s Human Rights & Dignity, told Newsweek that it used to be rare for children to have to appear in court multiple times and file an asylum claim before they could be reunited with family. "Now, kids are being ordered removed within a week or two of arriving in the U.S. because they have not yet filed an asylum claim. This is to say nothing of the fact that access to counsel is nearly impossible for newly arrived children because of the lack of federal funds for attorneys who are qualified to represent them," Desai said.
"On the USCIS side, when a child does file an asylum application, they are now routinely given only a few days and sometimes only a few hours' notice before their asylum interviews. This is arguably the most important interview of their life, and for some this interview has life or death implications." The groups say USCIS has scheduled more than 600 asylum interviews for their child clients since August 1, many of them with overlapping hearings that attorneys simply cannot attend at the same time. Notice of these hearings is, at times, coming less than 24 hours before children are expected to appear, while evidence is supposed to be submitted 14 days before an appearance.
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