GREENBELT, Md. — A federal judge on Friday stopped the Trump administration, for now, from cutting short the notice unaccompanied children get before an asylum interview.
U.S. District Judge Brendan Hurson issued a temporary restraining order against U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The order bars the agency from sharply shortening that notice and from limiting children’s ability to reschedule interviews, according to Reuters.
Hurson told the administration to return to its earlier rules for the process. His order runs until Nov. 13, while he decides whether to issue a longer block.
Legal providers brought the case. They include the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights and The Door, and they argued the new policies broke child-protection requirements in federal law, Reuters reported.
“Children must be protected from the government’s cruel attempts to put them on a deportation assembly line.”
The statement said the order gives a child time to meet with an attorney, build an asylum claim and present it to an asylum officer with counsel present. The lawsuit was filed on Oct. 15, according to the National Immigration Law Center.
Two policies were at issue, both adopted in August and September. Under one, USCIS scrapped a 21-day advance notice rule and began giving children little warning of a scheduled interview, sometimes less than 24 hours.
A second policy allowed an interview to be rescheduled only on a showing of “exceptional circumstances,” a tougher test than the one used before.
Hurson said the short notice clashed with the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008. That law, he said, requires the asylum process to account for the specialized needs of unaccompanied children, in the steps leading up to the interview as well as the interview itself.
The judge said the stricter rescheduling test also ran afoul of the Administrative Procedure Act. He rejected the administration’s argument that its rule simply mirrored federal law.
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees USCIS, did not respond to a request for comment, Reuters reported.
The case is The Door v. Edlow, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, No. 8:26-cv-04326.
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