Public Counsel, NILC, Gilbert Carrasco, Cohen Milstein, and Quinn Emanuel oppose government’s effort to strip constitutional safeguards and pressure vulnerable children into self-deportation
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- For more on Perez-Funez v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, click here.
LOS ANGELES, February 11, 2026—Public Counsel, the National Immigration Law Center (NILC), Gilbert Carrasco, Cohen Milstein, and Quinn Emanuel are back in federal court today to defend a permanent injunction that has protected unaccompanied immigrant children in U.S. custody since 1985.
For 40 years, the injunction in Perez-Funez v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security requires federal immigration agents to advise children of their rights and ensure they can communicate with a parent, close relative, friend, or legal services organization before making life-altering immigration decisions. The federal government has complied with the injunction for four decades without objection. Now, the Trump administration is moving to terminate its protections.
“This is a cruel and calculated attack on children who are already among the most vulnerable people in our society,” said Mark Rosenbaum, Senior Special Counsel for Strategic Litigation at Public Counsel, who helped secure the injunction when the case was first litigated. “For 40 years, these protections have recognized a fundamental truth: the situation facing unaccompanied children is inherently coercive. The Trump Administration now seeks to eliminate those protections so they can coerce children into waiving their rights unknowingly and involuntarily. This isn’t just bad policy. It’s an assault on the constitutional principles that protect all of us.”
The case originated in 1984 when children fleeing El Salvador’s brutal civil war challenged immigration officials’ practice of coercing recently apprehended children into “voluntarily” departing the United States. Following a trial, the court found that the situation facing unaccompanied children “is inherently coercive”, with children of “tender years” forced to make critical legal decisions while encountering “foreign and authoritarian” interrogators in stressful circumstances, without access to trusted adults.
The Trump administration’s efforts to eliminate these protections represents the latest attack on immigrant children’s rights. Legal services providers in the Rio Grande Valley area of Texas report that children are already being pressured to sign expedited return forms under coercive circumstances. The government seeks to exploit the brief 72-hour window after children are taken into custody and before they are transferred to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, where they meet with legal counsel. During this window, U.S. Customs and Border Protection uses a new “UAC Processing Pathway Advisal” form that threatens children with “prolonged detention” if they request a removal hearing or express fear of returning home.
“The Government’s new advisal document misleads, threatens, and intimidates kids into leaving the United States. The Trump Administration’s attempt to keep this process hidden from the Court and advocates shows a total disregard for the injunction and the basic due process rights of vulnerable children,” said Peter McGraw, deputy legal director at the National Immigration Law Center.
This attack comes amid escalating enforcement actions targeting children and families. The government’s motion also proposes to drastically expand the use of expedited return procedures beyond the limitations Congress established in the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act. Without the Perez-Funez protections, children of any age could face interrogation by government officials, be threatened with prolonged detention, and be pressured to sign forms they cannot understand, all without ever speaking to a parent, relative, or lawyer.
The U.S. District Court for the Central District of California is hearing arguments on February 11, 2026, on the government’s motion to terminate the injunction and the advocates’ cross-motion to preserve and strengthen protections for unaccompanied children.
Through this litigation, the legal coalition aims to defend constitutional safeguards that have protected vulnerable children for four decades and challenge a system that seeks to coerce frightened children into giving up their rights rather than ensuring they receive the due process and dignity the law guarantees.
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