This article was reprinted with permission from Virginia Mercury.
In a decisive rebuke of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an immigration judge on Wednesday ordered the agency to release a young immigrant held at a Virginia detention center — one day after the same court ordered the release of two brothers at the center of a class-action challenge to ICE’s treatment of Special Immigrant Juvenile Status applicants.
The two brothers, both in their late teens, were ordered released on Tuesday. On Wednesday, the court granted release to a third young immigrant in the same age group who, like the brothers, entered the country as an unaccompanied minor and later applied for SIJS, a pathway toward permanent legal protection. All three had been detained since August.
“These young brothers came to the U.S. as unaccompanied minors and cannot safely return to their home countries after it was determined that they were abused, abandoned, or neglected,” said ACLU of Virginia Legal Director Eden Heilman in a statement.
“Federal law says they have every legal right to be in the United States, and that ICE should never have put them in a detention center. Now they will finally be freed from detention and reunited with each other.”
ICE has not commented publicly on the Virginia rulings, and agency representatives didn’t respond to a request for comment.
A legal pathway ignored
Congress almost four decades ago created SIJS to give vulnerable children a path toward lawful permanent residency. The process requires a state court to determine that the child cannot safely return to their country of origin, followed by a visa application and, eventually, an adjustment to citizenship.
Those granted or applying for SIJS are not typically subject to mandatory detention.
Yet, the class-action complaint, filed in October by the ACLU of Virginia and partner counsel in the Alexandria Division of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, contends that ICE, under current policies, is treating SIJS-eligible youth as “arriving noncitizens” who must be detained without bond — despite protections under anti-trafficking laws, the Immigration and Nationality Act and the U.S. Constitution.
“Our clients are following the rules they’ve been given to obtain citizenship. The federal judge’s ruling confirmed that ICE is not,” said ACLU-VA Senior Immigrants’ Rights Attorney Sophia Gregg. “By ignoring the legal process Congress established decades ago, ICE is causing the very chaos and confusion that the Trump administration claims it’s working to fix.”
The federal judge’s order requires ICE to provide bond hearings to the named plaintiffs and bars the government from denying bond or invoking automatic stays if bond is granted.
The immigration court’s Tuesday order released the two brothers, both of whom arrived in the U.S. as minors and have SIJS applications or approvals. They were being held at the Caroline Detention Facility and the Farmville Detention Facility, both of which typically house adults.
On Wednesday, the court ordered a third plaintiff released — another client of the ACLU-VA who also entered the country as an unaccompanied minor and is eligible for SIJS protections. That ruling marked at least the second time this week the court rejected ICE’s argument that SIJS-eligible youth may be detained without bond.
A broader trend
Virginia’s case reflects a nationwide surge of litigation over ICE’s increasingly aggressive detention of immigrants — including youth with protected statuses — without access to bond hearings. For example, in Massachusetts, a federal judge recently certified a class action challenging denials of bond hearings to immigrants held without inspection.
In New Bedford, Mass., a judge last month ordered the release of an 18-year-old SIJS recipient held in a county facility despite his protected status.
A July 2025 memo from ICE declared that undocumented immigrants who entered without inspection could be detained throughout their removal proceedings — often months or years — without access to bond hearings.
“These cases show the growing force of legal challenges to ICE’s detention practices,” the Amica Center wrote after a separate court ruling this fall.
What’s at stake
Over the summer, immigration‐enforcement tactics in Virginia spurred widespread public protest.
Dozens gathered outside rallies organized by the Virginia Defenders for Freedom, Justice and Equality, calling for an end to local cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement following a wave of “masked, unmarked” detentions in the region.
In June and July, activists confronted courthouse raids in Chesterfield County and other sites, decrying what they described as “abduction-style” arrests of immigrants — many without criminal records. These protests underscored mounting local resistance as Virginia communities grapple with the human impact of enforcement policies.
For the three young immigrants now ordered released, the rulings mean freedom from detention and the chance to continue the SIJS process outside a jail setting.
But the broader class-action lawsuit remains in early stages, and thousands of other SIJS-eligible youth nationwide remain subject to detention policies advocates say misinterpret federal law.
Advocates warn that prolonged detention can inflict long-term psychological harm on young people who have already survived trauma. Courts across the country are increasingly being asked to determine whether the lack of bond access violates due-process guarantees for youth whose presence in the U.S. is legally protected.
