Since Trump retook the White House, officials have taken to keeping children who crossed the US-Mexico border unaccompanied in prolonged custody. Composite: The Guardian/Getty Images/Handouts from The Door View image in fullscreen Since Trump retook the White House, officials have taken to keeping children who crossed the US-Mexico border unaccompanied in prolonged custody. Composite: The Guardian/Getty Images/Handouts from The Door Building power US immigration US attorneys are freeing children from Trump’s ‘deportation machine’ with a new strategy Exclusive: Immigration advocates are securing early release of minors by filing habeas corpus petitions amid crackdown
About this content Alexandra Villarreal in New York Sun 1 Nov 2026 15.00 CET Last modified on Sun 1 Nov 2026 15.02 CET Share Prefer the Guardian on Google Migrant children stranded alone in prolonged Trump administration custody and targeted by whole-of-government efforts to deport them are starting to win release while they fight their cases – with a fresh legal strategy, the Guardian has found.
A growing army of attorneys across the US is racing around the clock like legal first responders to file petitions of habeas corpus in federal courts demanding freedom for their young clients.
Organizers of the new movement as well as pro-immigration advocates accuse the government of unconstitutional conduct and plain cruelty , keeping families apart and rushing small children into court without lawyers – to feed Donald Trump’s “deportation machine”.
Now they are hitting back with a rare habeas tactic and it is proving surprisingly successful amid the US president’s harsh crackdown that has swept up thousands of minors, according to leaders of the advocacy movement the Guardian first revealed in September.
View image in fullscreen A growing army of attorneys across the US is racing to file petitions of habeas corpus. Photograph: The Door Researchers estimate nearly all these cases end with a child’s release from federal custody. Some don’t even get as far as a court hearing before the administration backs down and lets the child go, likely in order to avoid having to explain their policy decisions to a judge.
Read more Since Trump retook the White House, officials have taken to keeping children who crossed the US-Mexico border unaccompanied in prolonged custody instead of allowing them to be with relatives or other vetted sponsors stateside while their legal case plays out.
Immigration enforcement activity is also “ creating ” new unaccompanied children, after sweeping up migrant kids in the country’s interior and separating them from their caregivers.
As of September, more than 1,800 unaccompanied children have spent six months on average in federal custody, compared with an average of 44 days between 2015 and 2024.
“The government is violating the law, and the regulations, and their own policy sometimes in this area,” said Marie Silver, supervising attorney at the Immigration and Human Rights Clinic at Loyola University Chicago School of Law, which is co-managing the new initiative, called the Children’s Due Process Project .
But, Silver continued, “I think the core of what the judges are picking up on and really sort of incensed about is just the true, underlying constitutional problems here when we keep children from their family members for no reason.”
Leading advocates are countering by rallying an expanding band of lawyers, drawn from around a hundred legal organi…