For the second time in as many months, a San Diego federal judge has ruled that the Trump administration is violating several key components of a historic legal settlement aimed at providing legal assistance, social services and a fair chance at asylum to the families who were systematically separated at the border during President Donald Trump\u2019s first term.<\/p>\n
U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw on Thursday ordered the federal government \u2014 again \u2014 to reinstate lapsed contracts with legal support and social service providers in order to remedy its breach of the settlement agreement. Sabraw said that the Trump administration\u2019s reasons for failing to renew those contracts \u2014 such as being cost-prohibitive or allegedly not adhering<\/a> to the president\u2019s new diversity, equity and inclusion policies \u2014 were unjustified.<\/p>\n In reiterating the significance of the settlement agreement, Sabraw repeated his characterization that the first Trump administration\u2019s family separation policy was \u201cone of the most shameful chapters in the history of our country.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt forced the separation of thousands of immigrant parents from their children, many of whom have yet to be reunified, and it caused profound, devastating, and lasting damage to those families,\u201d Sabraw wrote. \u201cThe Settlement Agreement, which was the result of painstaking negotiations between Plaintiffs and the Government, aimed to address that damage by providing these families with certain services at the Government\u2019s expense, including the behavioral health services, assistance with certain medical costs, and housing assistance at issue here.\u201d<\/p>\n The judge concluded: \u201cThose obligations continue regardless, and Defendants must comply with them.\u201d<\/p>\n The settlement is part of a lawsuit the American Civil Liberties Union filed in February 2018.<\/p>\n After Sabraw ruled that such separations of families arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border were unconstitutional, the focus of the litigation turned to reunification. Later, when the Biden administration inherited the case, efforts turned to a settlement.<\/p>\n One component of the settlement, which was agreed to in 2023<\/a>, prohibited the government from reenacting for at least eight years immigration policies that separate children and parents. The other component mandated that the government provide certain services to the families it had separated, including legal support for immigration and work authorization claims, and other social services.<\/p>\n But most of the services guaranteed in the settlement have lapsed in recent months as the Trump administration ended contracts with two nonprofit organizations that were central to providing or coordinating those services.<\/p>\n First, the administration cut off funding to Acacia Center for Justice, which was coordinating legal assistance for the families. The administration argued that the Department of Justice could handle that coordination on its own, even though that argument placed the DOJ in the unusual position of providing legal support to immigrants it is trying to remove from the country.<\/p>\n