This lawsuit challenged Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) practice of transferring unaccompanied minors who turn 18 years old to adult custody in the agency’s contracted jails and prisons, without considering less restrictive placements. In many cases, youth were sent to ICE detention even if they had sponsors waiting to take them in.
Following a four-week trial in December 2019 and January 2020, the Court held on July 2, 2020 that ICE is violating the law in the manner in which it detains 18 year-olds.
On September 21, 2021 the court issued a five-year permanent injunction, which requires ICE to re-train its officers, fill out new paperwork, re-vamp its training and policies with regards to age-outs, and provide monthly reports and documentation to class counsel on its rates of detention for age-outs. On November 9, 2021, the Court modified the permanent injunction to clarify which provisions are permanent and which are subject to the five-year time limit.
On September 7, 2022, the district court approved a settlement agreement wherein the government agreed to dismiss its appeal and the judgment and permanent injunction became final. Class counsel will continue to monitor the progress of ICE’s compliance with the settlement through review of monthly data from ICE through September 2026.
In October 2025, ICE began implementing a new policy to detain young people aging out of ORR custody, despite the existence of the judgment and permanent injunction in this case requiring compliance with the TVPRA’s age-out provisions. In the summer of 2025, ICE also began re-detaining young people who had previously aged-out of ORR custody without cause, often at their ICE check-ins. Plaintiffs’ counsel filed a motion for Temporary Restraining Order barring the use of this policy, which the district court granted on October 4, 2025. Plaintiffs’ counsel later filed a Motion to Enforce the Final Judgment on October 27, 2025.
On December 12, 2025, the Court granted Plaintiffs’ motion to enforce, holding that both new policies violated the Court’s permanent injunction. It also declared ICE’s re-detention policy unlawful, ordered the release of any class members re-arrested and detained under that policy, and ordered Defendants to provide class counsel with information regarding re-detained age-outs on an ongoing basis. Since the Court’s order, ICE appears to have stopped detaining age-outs at their first or second check-ins, and has released some class members that it wrongfully re-arrested. However, ICE has continued to re-detain some class members absent materially changed circumstances. On March 25, 2025, Plaintiffs’ counsel filed a Motion to Clarify and Enforce the Court’s December 2025 Order. On June 2, 2026, the Court granted in large part Plaintiffs’ motion, holding that ICE had failed to show a material change in circumstances for many re-detained class members, provided inadequate documentation to justify re-detentions to Plaintiffs’ counsel, and failed to promptly release unlawfully re-detained class members. The Court clarified its December 5 order by (1) instructing that a material change in circumstances must establish that the age-out is currently a danger to themselves, to the community, or is a flight risk; (2) requiring ICE to provide Plaintiffs’ counsel with all records it relies on to justify each age-out’s rearrest and detention, along with the name and contact information for the age-out’s attorney; and (3) requiring ICE to promptly determine an individual’s class membership and appropriate placement and to release the individual within 5 days of determining the person should be released. In addition, the Court ordered ICE to release 15 class members unlawfully re-detained.
The American Immigration Council joined this legal action in June 2020. The case was originally filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) and Kirkland & Ellis LLP in 2018.
Frequently Asked Questions
For more information about the court’s injunction, please read our Frequently Asked Questions, which includes a copy of a sample Release Request to Field Office Juvenile Coordinator. For an update on the Garcia Ramirez litigation, including the court’s December 2025 order enforcing the injunction and ongoing compliance issues, please read our April 2026 Practice Pointer.
