For the second time in as many months, a San Diego federal judge has ruled that the Trump administration is violating several key components of a historic legal settlement aimed at providing legal assistance, social services and a fair chance at asylum to the families who were systematically separated at the border during President Donald Trump’s first term.
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U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw on Thursday ordered the federal government — again — to reinstate lapsed contracts with legal support and social service providers in order to remedy its breach of the settlement agreement. Sabraw said that the Trump administration’s reasons for failing to renew those contracts — such as being cost-prohibitive or allegedly not adhering to the president’s new diversity, equity and inclusion policies — were unjustified.
In reiterating the significance of the settlement agreement, Sabraw repeated his characterization that the first Trump administration’s family separation policy was “one of the most shameful chapters in the history of our country.”
“It forced the separation of thousands of immigrant parents from their children, many of whom have yet to be reunified, and it caused profound, devastating, and lasting damage to those families,” Sabraw wrote. “The Settlement Agreement, which was the result of painstaking negotiations between Plaintiffs and the Government, aimed to address that damage by providing these families with certain services at the Government’s expense, including the behavioral health services, assistance with certain medical costs, and housing assistance at issue here.”
The judge concluded: “Those obligations continue regardless, and Defendants must comply with them.”
The settlement is part of a lawsuit the American Civil Liberties Union filed in February 2018.
After Sabraw ruled that such separations of families arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border were unconstitutional, the focus of the litigation turned to reunification. Later, when the Biden administration inherited the case, efforts turned to a settlement.
One component of the settlement, which was agreed to in 2023, prohibited the 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.
But most of the services guaranteed in the settlement have lapsed in recent months as the Trump administration ended contracts with two nonprofit organizations that were central to providing or coordinating those services.
First, the administration cut off funding to Acacia Center for Justice, which was coordinating legal assistance for the families. The administration argued that the Department of Justice could handle that coordination on its own, even though that argument placed the DOJ in the unusual position of providing legal support to immigrants it is trying to remove from the country.
On June 10, Sabraw ruled the government had breached the settlement by ending Acacia’s contract and ordered the administration to reinstate the Acacia contract to remedy the violations.
But more than a month after Sabraw’s order, the government has yet to renew the Acacia contract, much to the dismay of the plaintiffs and the judge. The government argued that it hadn’t renewed Acacia’s contract yet because it’s too expensive and asked to be allowed to contract with a different service provider.
The government also did not renew its contract with Seneca Family of Agencies, the Bay Area contractor that had been coordinating case management, behavioral health services, medical services and outreach to the class members. The administration argued that the non-renewal was because of Seneca’s purported diversity, equity and inclusion program.
Trump has targeted DEI programs since his first day back in office, and government attorneys said Seneca’s contract “raised concerns about potential violations of federal anti-discrimination laws.”
In his ruling Thursday, Sabraw said the government did not prevail on any of those arguments.
He said the government is free to engage in an open competitive process to find a contractor, but there can’t be a lapse in fulfilling the settlement obligations while doing so. He also ruled that changes in presidential administrations and priorities, including Trump’s executive order against DEI programs, are insufficient to modify the terms of a legally binding court agreement.
“It would mean, essentially, that parties could not enter into settlement agreements or consent decrees with an agency of the United States that spanned more than one administration as they could not count on adherence to the terms of the settlement agreement by subsequent administrations,” the ruling states, citing another federal judge’s opinion in a recent case.
Sabraw has given the government until Aug. 25 to renew the contracts. He also ordered attorneys on both sides to discuss whether any deadlines in the settlement agreement should be extended in light of the breaches.
The government’s actions have put the settlement “in real jeopardy,” Lee Gelernt, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs and the deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, told Sabraw during a hearing last week.
“The government seems to be trying very hard to get out of this settlement,” Gelernt told reporters after the hearing. “Whether that’s because of (the Department of Government Efficiency), whether it’s because of hostility to this particular settlement, or both, they are leaving a lot of families out to dry.”
Sabraw also ordered the government to continue to inform attorneys within 24 hours if a member of the class or a qualified family member is detained by immigration authorities.