Judge Blocks Policies That Fast-Tracked Asylum Cases for Unaccompanied Children

A federal judge in Maryland on Friday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from enforcing policies that sharply shortened the notice unaccompanied children get before asylum interviews and restricted their ability to reschedule those interviews.

US District Judge Brendan Hurson, sitting in Greenbelt, issued a temporary restraining order against US Citizenship and Immigration Services and ordered the agency to reinstate its earlier policies. The order remains in effect until November 13, while Hurson considers whether to block the policies for a longer period.

What the policies changed

Before the changes, USCIS had to give unaccompanied children at least 21 days of notice before an asylum interview. Under policies adopted in August and September, the agency dropped that requirement, and the legal groups that sued said children sometimes received less than 24 hours of notice. A related policy made interviews much harder to reschedule. The groups said the short timelines left children and their lawyers with little chance to prepare evidence or arrange representation for interviews that can decide whether a child stays in the United States or is sent back.

The lawsuit

Six legal service providers filed the case on October 15 in the US District Court for the District of Maryland. The plaintiffs are the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, The Door, the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, the Galveston-Houston Immigrant Representation Project, the Immigrant Defenders Law Center and Jewish Family and Community Services Pittsburgh. The case is The Door v. Edlow, No. 8:26-cv-04326, named for USCIS Director Joseph Edlow. The defendants also include senior homeland security and justice officials and the agencies they lead.

The plaintiffs argued that the policies were unlawful and inconsistent with the child protection requirements Congress wrote into law. They said the changes were built to rush children toward deportation before their cases could be heard in full, and that their organizations had to divert staff from other work to keep up with interviews scheduled on a few hours of notice.

The ruling

Hurson said the minimal notice USCIS now provides was inconsistent with the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008. That law requires the asylum process to take into account the specialized needs of unaccompanied children. Under the restraining order, the government must restore the practice of giving at least 21 days of notice and must allow children and their lawyers to reschedule interviews when necessary, according to the National Immigration Law Center, which represents plaintiffs in the case and welcomed the ruling in a statement on Friday.

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees USCIS, did not respond to a request for comment from Reuters.

What happens next

The restraining order lasts 14 days and runs until November 13. Hurson will then decide whether to block the policies for a longer period while the lawsuit continues. For now, asylum interviews for unaccompanied children return to the earlier schedule, with at least 21 days of notice before an interview. The plaintiff groups say they serve thousands of children across the United States, so the order reaches cases well beyond Maryland.