Court Eases Rule on Freeing Alien Minors

Minors held in Immigration and Naturalization Service detention centers have been ordered released to close relatives under a federal court ruling that accuses immigration authorities of using children as “bait” to capture their illegal-alien parents.

U.S. District Judge Robert J. Kelleher in Los Angeles issued the order earlier this week, putting a stop to a 2-year-old policy in the INS Western Region of releasing minors only to their parents or legal guardians.

While INS officials have maintained that the policy was implemented to protect the children, attorneys who filed the 1985 class action suit charged that immigration authorities were arresting illegal-alien parents when they presented themselves to claim their children. The suit also claims that the children are held in substandard facilities.

Under the ruling, minors may also be released to brothers or sisters, aunts or uncles, according to attorneys in the case. If no relatives outside INS detention can be located, a child may be released with an accompanying relative in detention. The child may also be released with a non-relative in detention who is identified by the child as someone who accompanied him to the United States.

How many children will be affected by the ruling remains a point of contention. Attorneys representing the children have contended that in 1985 about 200 children were in detention across the country at any given time, with as many as 8,000 held each year.

But Assistant U.S. Atty. Ian Fan, representing the INS in the case, said that earlier this month INS counted only 78 children in detention in its Western Region, which probably accounts for 75% of the total for the country. He conceded that the numbers have dropped by about 50% since enactment last November of the immigration reform law.

Kelleher’s ruling addressed only part of the lawsuit that also seeks to improve conditions at INS facilities where children are detained, the attorneys noted.

Carlos Holguin, a lawyer with the Center for Immigrants Rights Inc., representing the children, said a trial on the remainder of the suit is expected to begin later this summer.

The suit maintains that children arrested by INS are housed in facilities that often fail to meet state and federal licensing standards for juvenile detention centers. It charges that the centers do not provide the level of services that are granted to citizen children held in other juvenile facilities.

Holguin said he is encouraged by this week’s court ruling. “For the first time we’re beginning to look at these children in a similar way to how we look at the detention of other children taken into custody,” he said.