New High Impact Project Case Seeks Relief for Children Asylum-Seekers

The law firm of Eversheds Sutherland (US) LLP and Capital Area Immigrants’ Rights Coalition, through the coordination of the Barbara McDowell Foundation's High Impact Litigation Project, have joined to seek relief for three children asylum-seekers who have received faulty removal orders under the Remain in Mexico/Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) program. The appeal primarily involves due process challenges to the children’s removal orders, on the basis that the immigration judge on the border who adjudicated their mother’s asylum case did not give the children an adequate hearing on their own asylum claims. The appeal seeks new removal proceedings for the children on the basis that they are now unaccompanied immigrant children who are entitled to additional protections under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA).

Appeals such as these are critical to remedy the procedural shortcomings of MPP hearings and the government’s treatment of unaccompanied immigrant children previously in MPP proceedings. This appeal seeks to create precedent that will help other children processed under MPP.