Judge orders U.S. to return families affected by Trump's separation policy

A national justice connected Thursday ordered the U.S. authorities to instrumentality 3 migrant families affected by the family separation policy during President Trump's archetypal medication and past deported nether his second, declaring the deportations "unlawful."

U.S. District Court Judge Dana Sabraw, an appointee of erstwhile President George W. Bush, ruled that the families' deportations violated a tribunal colony designed to supply definite benefits to those affected by the archetypal Trump administration's argumentation of forcibly separating migrant children from their parents on the U.S.-Mexico border. 

That infamous weeks-long argumentation was scrapped successful 2018 amid ineligible challenges and wide nationalist outcry. In 2023, the Biden medication entered into a tribunal settlement successful which the U.S. authorities committed to offering definite benefits to the families impacted by the argumentation and limiting the quality for officials to transportation retired a akin signifier successful the future.

"Although the Settlement Agreement does not prohibit Defendants from enforcing the laws of the United States, the removals astatine contented present intelligibly violated the tone of the Agreement, which was to effect and enactment reunification successful the United States of families that had been separated pursuant to the household separation policy," Sabraw wrote successful his ruling.

"Defendants' determination to region these families rendered the benefits of the Settlement Agreement illusory for these families, and the mode successful which each of these removals was affected, successful summation to being unlawful, progressive lies, deception, and coercion," helium continued.

In a connection to CBS News connected Friday, Lee Gelernt, the American Civil Liberties Union lawyer representing thousands of migrant families forcibly separated nether the archetypal Trump administration, hailed Sabraw's order.

"The Trump medication not lone cruelly separated these families during the archetypal word but present is again deporting and re-separating these aforesaid families," Gelernt added. "The Court said capable is capable and ordered the Trump medication to bring backmost the families and to bash truthful astatine authorities expense."

In his ruling, Sabraw described 3 families helium recovered had been wrongfully deported. All 3 cases progressive mothers who had been straight oregon indirectly affected by the household separation policy. 

One of them, helium wrote, had been "forcibly separated from her girl successful 2018 pursuant to the archetypal Trump Administration's household separation policy." The miss was 5 years aged astatine the time, according to tribunal records.

In that case, Sabraw said the parent was pressured aggregate times past twelvemonth to self-deport by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials. She alleged successful a declaration cited by Sabraw that 1 ICE serviceman suggested her children would beryllium sent to "foster attraction oregon adoption" if she did not self-deport, and that a squad of bureau officers went to her location once.

"One serviceman said they would facilitate my voluntary departure if I was not readying to deport connected my own," she wrote successful a declaration referenced by Sabraw. "Overwhelmed, depressed and frustrated, I told the officers they mightiness arsenic good 'send maine back' due to the fact that I had nary different options here."

Sabraw recovered that the parent and her 3 children "did not voluntarily depart the United States" and that they had alternatively been deported, contempt having impermanent support to beryllium successful the U.S. done a assistance of migration parole. He besides said they were removed weeks aft helium ordered the authorities successful June 2025 to intermission immoderate deportations of families eligible for benefits nether the tribunal settlement.

Sabraw said the different 2 cases entailed "strikingly similar" patterns, and ordered the Trump medication to wage for the families' return.

CBS News reached retired to representatives for the Department of Homeland Security seeking remark connected Thursday's ruling.