Citing settlement breaches, San Diego judge extends asylum deadlines for separated families

The immigrant families who were systematically separated at the border during President Donald Trump’s first term in office will now have one additional year to seek asylum in the U.S. because of the current Trump administration’s multiple breaches of the historic legal settlement pertaining to those separations, a San Diego federal judge ruled Monday.

U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw, who has twice ruled in recent months that the Trump administration has breached the class-action legal settlement, wrote in his ruling Monday that the beneficiaries of that settlement have now gone four months without the legal assistance to which they’re entitled. Sabraw cited that gap in services, and the additional time it will take to restore those services, as a reason for extending by one year certain deadlines related to asylum claims.

The judge also granted one-year extensions of deadlines dealing with registering families to be part of the class-action settlement and the final termination date of the agreement. He granted six-month extensions of deadlines dealing with certain services the government must provide class members, as well as immigration parole and work authorization grants.

Attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union, who represent the roughly 9,000 people covered by the settlement, hope the newly ordered extensions will provide enough time for the previously separated families to complete their asylum applications, while in the meantime being protected from deportation, as Sabraw has ordered.

“The court once again rejected the Trump administration’s efforts to undermine this critical settlement and made clear these families must have an opportunity to get the services they need and to remain together,” Lee Gelernt, the deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said in a statement Tuesday.

In a related ruling issued Tuesday, Sabraw ordered the government to provide the ACLU with identifying information for all those who are covered by the settlement who are also required to report for check-ins with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

In that order, the judge reminded the Trump administration that several federal agencies are parties to the settlement agreement, and that as such the administration has “an equal responsibility to ensure that class members receive the relief to which they are entitled, and to ensure that Class Members and (qualifying additional family members) are neither wrongfully detained nor removed.”

Later on Tuesday, government attorneys filed a notice that they’ll appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn two of Sabraw’s previous orders that the government alert the ACLU within 24 hours if it detains anyone covered by the settlement agreement.

The settlement is part of a lawsuit the ACLU filed in February 2018 in San Diego federal court. After Sabraw ruled it was unconstitutional to systematically separate families arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border, the focus of the litigation turned to reunification. The Biden administration inherited the case and reached a settlement with the ACLU in 2023.

One component of the agreement barred the federal 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.

Sabraw has ruled repeatedly in recent months that the current administration has breached the settlement by canceling contracts with Acacia Center for Justice and Seneca Family of Agencies, two of the main nonprofit organizations involved in providing the settlement-mandated services.

Last month, the judge ordered the government to renew the lapsed contracts with Acacia, which was coordinating legal assistance for the families, and Bay Area-based Seneca, which had been coordinating case management, behavioral health services, medical services and outreach to the class members.

Earlier this month, the ACLU attorneys argued that due to the lapse of those services and the months it will take Acacia and Seneca to restaff and rebuild their programs, “hundreds of class and family members have lost their parole status, leaving them vulnerable to detention, removal, and reseparation.”

The ACLU attorneys argued that the lapse in legal services came at an especially inopportune time since families who were part of the class-action lawsuit when it settled in December 2023 had a two-year deadline to apply for asylum approaching this December.

Without the extension of that deadline and others, the ACLU attorneys argued, the Trump administration’s “breaches will continue to frustrate the purpose and terms of the settlement.”

Government attorneys argued that the extension of the asylum-application deadline and others would be premature since the government is following court orders by negotiating new contracts with Acacia and Seneca.

“Moreover, extending the deadlines would constitute an unsubstantiated expansion of the terms negotiated by the parties and approved by the Court,” Daniel Schutrum-Boward, a trial attorney with the Department of Justice’s Office of Immigration Litigation, wrote in a motion opposing the deadline extensions.

Sabraw sided with the ACLU attorneys. Among the key deadline extensions he ordered was a one-year extension of the deadline by which class members have to complete their asylum applications or seek relief related to removal proceedings.

The judge also extended by one year, from December 2026 to December 2027, the deadline by which previously separated families can register to be considered for acceptance into the class.

Sabraw also extended the final termination date of the settlement agreement from December 2029 to December 2030.