On October 3, 2019, noncitizen children and their parents filed this class action in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona, challenging the Trump Administration's separation of asylum seeker families. The plaintiffs, represented by the ACLU Immigrant Rights Project, sued various personnel from five federal departments: the Department of Justice (DOJ), the White House, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS); and the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). Proceeding under §§ 1985 and 1986 and Bivens, the plaintiffs claimed violations of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments.

The complaint alleged that defendants’ policy of separating children from their parents at the U.S. border caused irreparable and psychological and physical damage to children and parents, and that the practice was intended to inflict pain on immigrants in hopes they would abandon their asylum cases and to deter other immigrants from seeking asylum. It also stated that after children were separated, they were detained in punitive conditions, and that the defendants failed to adequately track children so as to reunite children with their parents. The plaintiffs sought compensatory and punitive damages. They also sought certification of two classes: (1) a class of all minor children who had arrived since 2017 and been separated from their parents by DHS or its agencies without a hearing demonstrating that a parent was unfit or dangerous to the child, and (2) a class of all parents of minor children subjected to the same separation with a hearing. The case was assigned to Judge James A. Soto.

The defendants filed a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim and for lack of jurisdiction on February 14, 2020. Due to the COVID-19 crisis, the plaintiffs successfully sought a delay in filing their reply on March 20. The case is ongoing.

Cedar Hobbs - 11/03/2019
Ellen Aldin - 05/25/2020


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