Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) continues to arrest minors who turn 18 while held in children’s detention facilities. In one instance, a 17-year-old girl who fled sexual violence in El Salvador and was being held at a Homestead, Florida, facility was shackled by ICE on the very morning of her 18th birthday. "You feel horrible. Who would wish that on anybody on their birthday?" Lisseth told NPR. "You feel like a criminal, handcuffed that way. No one tells you that on your birthday, not only will you not get to celebrate. On the contrary, two strangers are going to take you in handcuffs in a van to a detention cell that is freezing.”
“Child shelters like Homestead cannot, statutorily, house migrants once they turn 18,” NPR notes, but immigrant rights advocates argue that transferring minors to adult facilities where they’ll know no one is jarring, traumatizing, and possibly violating the law. “In 2008, Congress enacted a law that instructs ICE to place unaccompanied immigrant children ‘in the least restrictive setting available’ or find them alternatives to detention. Typically, that means finding a sponsor or a group home for them. Then, in 2013, Congress amended the rule to extend the protections to immigrants who turn 18 in U.S. custody.”
According to government data spanning nearly two years, in two-thirds of cases, “ICE put migrant youths into detention when they turned 18.” NPR reports these young people can try continue the sponsor process in an adult facility, but now they are at increased risk of deportation due to their age and location. In one instance last year, 17-year-old “Roberto” had a sponsor who was eager to pull him out of Homestead, but the federal government took months to process his information, eating up precious time until his 18th birthday.
"The law says you're an adult, but you're not, psychologically and physically," Lisseth said about getting arrested by ICE. "How is my brain supposed to change into an adult overnight?" Advocates have now filed a nationwide class-action lawsuit to bar ICE from arresting minors who turn 18 while in custody. "It's something that is of grave concern to us,” said Neha Desai of the National Center for Youth Law. “There've been a significant number of children that have aged out that were ready to be reunified with their sponsors.”