Written by Jim Vertuno
Texas’s Austin (AP) Civil rights organizations and the family’s lawyers announced Thursday that a mother and her two young Honduran children who had filed what was thought to be the first lawsuit involving children contesting the Trump administration’s policy on immigrant arrests at courthouses had been released from custody.
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The mother, named as Ms. Z, her 6-year-old son, and her 9-year-old daughter were arrested outside the courtroom following an immigration court appearance in Los Angeles, according to the lawsuit filed on their behalf. The Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas has been housing them for weeks. Because of worries about their safety, their identities have not been made public.
According to the lawsuit, the family used a Biden-era appointment app to enter the country lawfully, and their arrest infringed upon their Fifth Amendment right to due process and Fourth Amendment right against unjustified searches and seizures.
The youngster had recently received chemotherapy for leukemia, according to the family’s attorneys, and his mother was concerned that his health was deteriorating while he was being held.
Elora Mukherjee, a professor at Columbia Law School and one of the family’s attorneys, claimed the family was released late Wednesday while their case was still ongoing and that they visited a shelter in South Texas before relocating to the Los Angeles region.
The family will keep working on their asylum application while they return to their lives, including church and school. Additionally, Mukherjee expressed hope that the young kid would receive the necessary medical care. In the first place, they shouldn’t have been taken into custody. We appreciate that they are now free.
An email request for comment was not immediately answered by Department of Homeland Security officials. The organization said on social media last week that since coming to the Dilley facility, the kid has been examined by doctors on a regular basis.
As part of the White House’s massive deportation operation, the nation has witnessed widespread arrests since May, with asylum-seekers who show up for regular hearings being taken into custody outside of courtrooms. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel will often arrest the individual and put them on expedited removal, which is a fast track to deportation, once a judge grants a government attorney’s motion to drop deportation proceedings.
The Z family’s attorneys claimed that their case was the first to be brought on behalf of minors contesting the ICE courthouse arrest policy.
Similar cases have also been filed in New York, where a federal judge said last month that federal immigration officials are not allowed to conduct civil arrests at state courthouses or detain anyone who is present for a hearing.
Kate Gibson Kumar, a staff attorney for the Texas Civil Rights Project’s Beyond Borders Program, said the release of the Z family shows the strength we have when we oppose damaging, un-American policies.
According to the family’s attorneys, the mother expressed their desire to pursue their asylum claims during their court session. The judge promptly granted Homeland Security’s motion to have their charges dismissed.
Mukherjee claimed that when they left the courtroom, they discovered guys dressed in civilian clothes who they assumed were ICE officers and who had taken the family into custody. They were only provided with an apple, a small packet of cookies, a juice box, and water throughout their approximately 11-hour stay at an immigrant processing center in Los Angeles.
An officer standing close to the youngster once pulled up his shirt to show his rifle. According to Mukherjee, the youngster peed on himself and was kept in damp clothes until the following morning.
