On November 5, 2024, the federal court for the Southern District of California approved a settlement under which the United States government agreed to pay $6,411,664.07 in legal fees and costs incurred by Plaintiffs in a class-action challenge to the migrant family separation policy implemented under the first administration of Pres. Donald J. Trump (R). The same court earlier approved a separate settlement on December 8, 2023, which blocks any attempt for eight years to resume the “zero tolerance” policy under which minor children were taken from migrant parents trying to cross the U.S. border without authorization.

That misdemeanor crime was met with the unprecedented policy implemented in July 2017. The brainchild of Tom Homan, then-acting director of federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), was intended to terrorize migrant parents with the threat of losing their minor children to deter them from entering the country illegally. Separations were quietly carried out by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials, starting at Texas border crossings before expanding across the U.S.

Eventually, on May 7, 2018, then-U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions was forced to admit to Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy. Meanwhile, thousands of minor children separated from their parents were shipped hundreds of miles away and placed under care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). Their parents were criminally prosecuted, but most were not immediately reunited with their kids when their sentences were completed; the Department of Homeland Security, CBP’s parent agency, had failed to put adequate systems in place to track their location. As a result, many parents were then deported without their children.

Several migrant parents, represented by attorneys with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), sued the government, seeking a preliminary injunction to halt the policy. U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw certified the class and issued the injunction, ending the policy in 2018—about a week after Trump did so himself by executive order, caving to outrage over his stunt. By that time, some 5,000 migrant kids had been forcibly separated from their parents. See: Ms. L. v. U.S. Immigration & Customs Enf’t, 310 F. Supp. 3d 1133 (S.D. Cal. 2018).

The district court subsequently granted a motion allowing class members who’d been deported to return to the U.S. and be reunited with their children. The parents could then pursue their asylum claims; by January 2020, most but not all children had been reunified with parents from whom they had been separated for up to two and a half years—an eternity in a young child’s life. Even so, the district court largely refused to order enforcement of the injunction, and another 1,000 children were separated from their parents. See: Ms. L. v. United States Immigration & Customs Enf’t, 403 F. Supp. 3d 853 (S.D. Cal. 2019); and 415 F. Supp. 3d 980 (S.D. Cal. 2020).

Trump left office in 2021 after losing his re-election bid to Pres. Joseph R. Biden, Jr. (D). The federal Department of Justice (DOJ) under Biden reached a settlement with the migrant parents, agreeing not to resume any “zero tolerance” policy December before 2031. However, exceptions allowed ICE agents to separate migrant children from parents suspected of abusing them or who had been convicted of a serious offense, as well as those children whose parentage is in doubt.

The DOJ agreed to pay the ACLU over $6.4 million in attorneys’ fees and costs for the work performed on the case, but the settlement provided no payouts to victims, though some may qualify for other government benefits, including legal status and counseling for up to three years, a year of housing, legal aid in immigration court and family reunification in the U.S. at government expense. See: Ms. L. v. United States Immigration & Customs Enf’t, USDC (S.D. Cal.), Case No. 3:18-cv-00428.

In 2023, ACLU attorneys told Sabraw that 68 children forcibly separated from their parents under the Trump policy remained unaccounted for. Calling that his “greatest fear,” Sabraw said it marked “one of the most shameful chapters in the history of our country.”

A separate suit for damages that they suffered under the policy filed by eight migrant parents and kids in federal court for the District of Arizona was also settled in July 2024, as reported elsewhere in this issue. [See: PLN, Mar. 2025, p.25.]

Now that Trump is back in the White House, it remains to be seen whether he will comply with the settlement agreement, especially with Homan newly installed in a West Wing office as the President’s “Border Czar.”  

Additional sources: AP News, CNN

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