Judge blocks Trump administration from sending migrant teens to adult detention

A judge on Saturday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from sending underage migrants to adult detention centers once they turn 18. 

U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras said the new policy violates an order he issued in 2021 that instructed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement not to send any migrant to an ICE detention center after they turn 18. 

Underage migrants aren’t held in ICE detention centers. They’re held in centers run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 

Fox News Digital has reached out to ICE for comment. 

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U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras said the new policy violates an order he issued in 2021 that directed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement not to send any migrant to an ICE detention center after they turn 18.  (AP Photo/Erin Hooley)

The Trump administration is now offering teen migrants a $2,500 stipend to leave the United States voluntarily, according to several reports citing a letter sent Friday by the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of Refugee Resettlement to shelters housing migrant children.

Several immigration rights groups had asked Contreras to intervene in the filing made just after midnight Saturday morning. 

Last month, another judge blocked the Trump administration from deporting certain Guatemalan minors to their home country after the government walked back claims that it intended to reunite the youths with their parents.

Judge Timothy Kelly, who issued the order, said the Trump administration could not show that any parents wanted their children back.

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Immigrants line up in the dining hall at a new U.S. government holding center for migrant children in Carrizo Springs, Texas, July 9, 2019.  (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)

“That explanation crumbled like a house of cards about a week later,” Kelly wrote in his order. “There is no evidence before the Court that the parents of these children sought their return.”

Michelle Lapointe, a lawyer for the American Immigration Council, one of the organizations involved in the filing, told The Associated Press, “All of these are pieces of the same general policy to coerce immigrant youth into giving up their right to seek protection in the United States.” 

Migrant children in the U.S. are often released into foster care or to family members as long as they’re not considered a flight risk or a danger. 

A federal agent sits in a vehicle outside a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building Sept. 24, 2025, in Broadview, Ill. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley)

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Lawyers for some of the migrants said they heard that ICE was telling shelters that children turning 18 would be taken to ICE detention centers even if they already had plans to be released and that they could only be released on a case-by-case basis for “urgent humanitarian reasons” or “significant public benefit.”

Fox News’ Ashley Oliver and Michael Dorgan and The Associated Press contributed to this report.