A San Diego judge issued his final ruling Tuesday finding that the Trump administration has violated three provisions of a class-action legal settlement aimed at reunifying and providing legal support and other assistance to migrant families who were systematically separated at the border during President Donald Trump’s first term.
But that same day, the administration asked the judge to suspend a different provision of the settlement that requires it to provide outreach, behavioral health services and medical services to the separated families. Government attorneys argued the contractor providing those services has “likely violated anti-discrimination civil rights laws” based on its diversity, equity and inclusion program.
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Attorneys working with the separated migrant families called the government’s motion “absurd” and described the allegations of civil rights violations based on DEI as a “witch hunt,” saying it was the Trump administration’s latest attempt to undermine the settlement.
“At this point, the Trump administration has not claimed they intend to try and get out of the settlement, but it certainly feels that way given all the aspects with which they are not complying,” Lee Gelernt, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs and the deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said Thursday.
Anilú Chadwick, pro bono director at Together & Free, a group that has worked with separated families since 2018, said the government’s proposal would cut off separated families from their “one lifeline” to vital behavioral health services.
“How can the government pull the rug out from under these families again?” Chadwick said.
The Department of Homeland Security, Department of Justice and other agencies involved in the litigation and settlement did not respond to requests for comment.
The settlement in question is part of a lawsuit filed in February 2018 against the first Trump administration that initially centered on the legality of separating migrant parents and children who arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border under Trump’s first-term “zero tolerance” policy.
After U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw ruled the separations were unconstitutional, the focus of the litigation turned to reunification efforts.
The Biden administration inherited the case and, in 2023, reached a settlement with the ACLU. The agreement covers roughly 9,000 qualified members of the class-action suit, including the parents and children who were separated and some of their other family members. One component of the agreement prohibited the government from reenacting for at least eight years immigration policies that separate children and parents. The other component mandated that the government continue reunifying separated families and provide certain services to them, including legal support for immigration and work authorization claims and certain medical coverage and behavioral health services.
“The ACLU has settled hundreds of lawsuits in our 103-year history, but none more important than this one,” ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero said in October 2023.
Under the Biden administration, the government contracted with several third-party groups to provide the services mandated by the settlement. In recent months under the new Trump administration, those contracts have been central to a renewed legal fight in the case.
First, the Trump administration cut off funding to Acacia Center for Justice, which was coordinating legal assistance for the families, arguing that DOJ could handle that coordination on its own. That placed DOJ in the unusual position of providing legal support to immigrants it is trying to remove from the country.
After issuing a tentative ruling last week finding the government breached the settlement, Sabraw issued his final ruling Tuesday, noting that the Acacia contract “was canceled at the request of President Trump’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency,’ also known as DOGE.” He ordered the government to reinstate its contract with Acacia to remedy the violations.
Just hours before Sabraw issued that ruling, DOJ attorneys asked him to “temporarily suspend the provisions in the Settlement Agreement pertaining to behavioral health services, medical services, and outreach.” The attorneys wrote in a motion that the administration could need more than five months to find a new contractor for those services because Seneca Family of Agencies, the Bay Area-based contractor who had been coordinating those services, has a DEI program that “raised concerns about potential violations of federal anti-discrimination laws.”
Trump has targeted DEI programs since being back in office, issuing an executive order on Inauguration Day seeking to terminate “equity-related” grants and requiring a federal budgeting agency review grant recipients that advance DEI or environmental justice programs.
The government attorneys revealed in Tuesday’s filing that DHS has referred Seneca to the Department of Labor for potential investigation. The referral letter is included as an attachment to the court filing.
“For nearly 40 years, Seneca has worked to help children and families through the most difficult times of their lives,” the organization said in a statement Thursday. “We take pride in our compliance with civil rights and employment laws and have received no specific evidence of any violations.”
The organization said it was disappointed by the government’s choice not to renew its contract.
“Since 2022, Seneca has helped thousands of separated families access vital behavioral health care, medical services, and case management support. The failure to renew the contract disrupts essential services for families still grappling with the lasting effects of forced separation.”
The ACLU’s Gelernt said canceling Seneca’s contract would “have a devastating impact because Seneca is the gateway to all the families, doing the outreach to them and connecting them to all the critical services to which they are entitled under the settlement.”
Nan Schivone, legal director for Justice in Motion, a Seneca subcontractor that has handled international outreach, said the government owes separated families “continued outreach and ongoing case management so that settlement benefits and deadlines are clear and accessible.”
Schivone said that goes for families who have been paroled into the U.S. who are “receiving behavioral health attention … to be able to recover from the extreme trauma of having been separated,” as well as families who have only recently been located internationally.
“They, too, deserve the chance to reunite and heal in the U.S.,” she said. “This is what the government promised when they signed the settlement agreement.”
Gelernt and the ACLU have not yet responded to the government’s motion. Sabraw set a hearing in the case for later this month to assess the government’s renewal of the Acacia contract.