Immigrant Youth at Deportation Risk After Trump Policy Shift (1)

Tens of thousands of young immigrants stuck in backlogs for humanitarian green cards are left without deportation protections or legal work authorization after the Trump administration canceled a Biden-era policy.

The Department of Homeland Security’s quiet termination of a deferred action policy for children and youth approved for Special Immigrant Juvenile Status makes that group yet another potential target for the Trump mass deportation agenda.

The juvenile status program offers a path to permanent residency for immigrants who experienced abuse, abandonment, or neglect by at least one parent. But limited visa numbers and rising demand in recent years left a growing number of applicants in limbo and vulnerable to labor exploitation. Interim protections extended to recipients in 2022 offered a lifeline, advocates say.

DHS halted those deferred action grants in April and two months later announced it would no longer accept new applications or renewals. Immigrants’ rights advocates are challenging that move in the Eastern District of New York, alleging Administrative Procedure Act violations.

Some immigrant youth have already faced deportation proceedings and thousands more could face removal as soon as next year.

US Citizenship and Immigration Services has meanwhile renewed concerns in a recent report about fraud and gang connections in the program. Director Joseph Edlow, in an interview with the conservative network NewsMax, blamed “activist courts” for approving benefits for gang members.

DHS is maligning at-risk immigrant youth to distract from the unlawful termination of protections, say attorneys suing the agency.

Ending deferred action is a de facto revocation of benefits for individuals waiting for green cards they can’t seek from outside the country, said Rachel Davidson, counsel for plaintiffs and director of the End SIJS Backlog Coalition at the National Immigration Project.

“This administration is working to limit legal pathways and to remove any temporary protections they can to effectuate their mass deportation agenda,” she said.

Mounting Backlogs

The juvenile status program is unique among humanitarian immigration programs thanks to the role played by state juvenile courts.

Approval involves a three-step process in which the state court finds an applicant suffered abuse or abandonment by one or both parents, USCIS approves a petition filed with the state court, and the applicant files for permanent residency when a visa number is available.

The program is limited to just under 10,000 green cards annually, but applications surpass that limit at a growing rate. Last year alone, USCIS approved more than 70,000 petitions.

When Congress created the program in 1990, lawmakers didn’t envision the backlogs that would result from including it among employment-based visa categories or intend for young people to wait years for a visa to become available, Davidson said.

The backlog began in 2016 as a result of a change in how the government determined visa availability and has been fueled by a rising number of unaccompanied children coming to the US.

Although immigration courts have typically paused deportation cases for recipients of the juvenile status, it wasn’t until deferred action was offered that they could access driver’s licenses, health insurance, and other benefits linked to employment authorization in many states, Grossman Young & Hammond LLC senior attorney Gianna Borroto said.

“Being able to drive to school or work was so critical. It gave them a sense of autonomy,” she said. “All of these benefits were huge to kids who had just been in limbo waiting for the chance to apply for a green card.”

Crime Concerns

While Congress didn’t project current visa wait times, an approved Special Immigrant Juvenile Status petition isn’t a sufficiently compelling reason for deferred action, USCIS said in a June 6 policy update. It linked the shift to President Donald Trump’s executive order on protecting the US from foreign terrorists and other threats to national security and public safety.

Critics of the program, including officials in the first Trump administration, alleged it’s been targeted for fraud and exploitation by criminal gangs. The USCIS Fraud Division this month identified more than 500 juvenile status recipients since 2013 as known or suspected members of MS-13 and 18th Street gang. It also concluded more than 18,000 petitioners were found to have had “derogatory” encounters with state and local law enforcement.

The agency declined to comment on the deferred action policy or litigation.

Vulnerable populations like the one served by the juvenile visa program are at higher risk of encounters with law enforcement, said Kathleen Bush-Joseph, an attorney and policy analyst at Migration Policy Institute. In some cases, immigrant youth who seek protection in the US have been forced to join gangs against their will, she said.

Project 2025, the conservative blueprint for Trump executive actions, didn’t address the program but proposed eliminating visas for crime victims who cooperate with law enforcement, arguing victimization shouldn’t be the basis of an immigration benefit.

“To me this is the same logic,” Bush-Joseph said.

Legal Fight

Immigration advocacy groups Carecen-NY and Centro Legal de la Raza along with several immigrant youth argue in their lawsuit that DHS violated the APA because it didn’t allow for public comment or consider reliance interests and potential harms to immigrants.

Plaintiffs include a worker at an auto parts manufacturer, a school bus driver assistant, and high school students with juvenile status. They’re asking the court to restore the deferred action policy and bar deportation of plaintiffs while litigation unfolds. An injunction hearing is scheduled next month.

The government has already filed motions in immigration courts to add removal cases for juvenile status recipients back to active dockets, Borroto said, signaling the Trump administration isn’t waiting to pursue deportations.

“Removing these protections just places them at immensely more risk of harm with the added chance of being deported to a country where their lives could be in danger,” she said.

The National Immigration Project, Public Counsel, Kids in Need of Defense, Lowenstein Sandler LLP, and Davis Wright Tremaine LLP represent the plaintiffs in the litigation. The Department of Justice represents DHS.

The case is A.C.R. v. Noem, E.D.N.Y., No. 25-03962.