August 7, 2026
Children should not have to spend months in federal custody, separated from their families, while the federal government delays decisions about their release.
Yet across the country—and here in Connecticut—unaccompanied immigrant children are remaining in federal custody for dramatically longer periods of time. Some arrived at the border without a parent or legal guardian. Other children were already living with family, attending school, and building lives in the United States when immigration authorities took them into custody.
In spring 2026, an average of more than two dozen immigrant children were being held without a parent or guardian in federal custody in Connecticut. Nationally, children spent an average of 205 days in federal custody in May, compared with approximately 30 days in 2024. Some Connecticut children were held for far longer—including one child who spent 505 days separated from family (CT Insider).
Through its Immigrant Children’s Justice Project, the Center for Children’s Advocacy is working to protect these children through direct legal representation, federal litigation, pro bono partnerships, public education, and systemic advocacy.
Why Are Children Being Held for So Long?
When federal authorities encounter an immigrant child under 18 who is not accompanied by a parent or legal guardian, the child may be legally designated as an unaccompanied child. Federal law generally requires that child to be transferred to the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, or ORR, which is responsible for caring for children while identifying and evaluating a parent, relative, or other appropriate adult who can serve as a sponsor.
Children are supposed to be placed promptly by ORR in the least restrictive setting that is in their best interests. Suitable parents and family are generally considered to be the least restrictive setting for children. Once a parent or legal guardian’s sponsorship application is complete, federal regulations generally require ORR to decide the application within 10 days, absent an unexpected delay.
But since the beginning of 2025, the sponsorship process has changed substantially with ORR adding additional requirements for sponsors to fulfill.
Families have been required to complete DNA testing, home studies, background checks, and other forms of verification. CCA’s clients and their families have complied with these requirements, but the government has taken weeks or months to even schedule individual steps, repeatedly requested additional information, and delayed deciding whether children could return home for weeks and months.
In one case involving a five-year-old girl, a DNA test that should have been scheduled within days was not ordered for approximately three months. Her mother had a bedroom prepared for her and completed the steps required by the government, but her daughter remained in custody for 118 days. In another case involving a fourteen-year-old boy, ORR waited 4 months to order DNA testing when the law requires ORR to schedule a DNA test within 5-7 days of deciding it is necessary. And ORR waited 5 months to order a homestudy, and even when the study was completed within days with a positive recommendation, ORR continued detaining a sixteen-year-old child.
The government says more extensive sponsor vetting is necessary to prevent children from being released into unsafe situations. CCA agrees that children must be protected. But there is no excuse for the excessive lengths of time it is taking ORR to process applications and its failure to comply with the law and its own regulations mandating timely determinations of sponsor applications. Child safety does not require prolonged detention of months and even years when a fit parent or caregiver is ready to bring a child home.
As Immigrant Children’s Justice Project (ICJP) Director and Senior Attorney Sabrina Tavi explained, “The families we work with are willing to do anything ORR asks to have their children released. But despite parents doing everything asked of them to reunify with their children, ORR delays the process, resulting in children being detained for these excessive periods of time.”
Going to Federal Court to Bring Children Home
Since late 2025, CCA has worked with attorneys from Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder to challenge the prolonged detention of children held in Connecticut.
CCA and its co-counsel represented four children in federal habeas corpus cases. A habeas lawsuit challenges the government’s legal authority to continue holding someone in custody. In each of CCA’s cases, legal action forced the government to act and the children were released to their families shortly after litigation began.
The children included:
- A five-year-old separated from her mother for 118 days
- A 16-year-old detained for 143 days after being unlawfully arrested by immigration authorities despite having approved Special Immigrant Juvenile Status and Deferred Action
- Two brothers, ages 14 and 16, held for 167 days while their father sought to bring them home
These cases were part of a broader pattern uncovered by CT Insider. Its investigation examined six children held between 118 and 505 days. Four were released shortly after lawsuits were filed; two were released after federal judges ordered the government to act. All six were ultimately reunited with family as the result of lawsuits being filed against the government.
The speed with which the government acted once the cases entered court demonstrated why access to legal representation is essential.
The Lasting Harm of Prolonged Detention
At a July 31 press conference convened by U.S. Representative Rosa DeLauro at New Haven City Hall, CCA Founder and Special Counsel Martha Stone shared children’s own descriptions of prolonged detention. “We can’t bring the children here to this press conference. We can’t disclose their names, or their faces, or their voices, but that doesn’t mean that we can allow them to be invisible.”
One teenager said: “The worst part is not knowing when I’m going to leave. Sometimes I have hope, and sometimes I lose it.”
Another described detention as being “stuck in a waiting room for something that never happens.”
The facilities caring for children in ORR custody were designed to provide transitional care—not to replace a family, neighborhood school, or community for months or more than a year.
Children in ORR custody may live in congregate care shelters where they sleep, eat, and attend classes in the same building. Other children may sleep with foster families but spend their days at a federally contracted program. They cannot leave freely and are generally accompanied by staff when outside the facility.
As the months pass, attorneys report seeing children become increasingly anxious, depressed, isolated, and hopeless. The uncertainty itself compounds the harm: children do not know when they will leave, when they will see their families again, or what new requirement may be imposed before they can go home. One child described being in custody as a “nightmare” and as “waiting somewhere I don’t belong.”
Their education is also disrupted. Children awaiting sponsorship approval do not attend public schools but instead receive educational instruction at the facility. Children of different ages and academic levels may receive instruction together, and coursework completed inside a facility may not transfer to the school they attend after release. Some young people were removed from public schools where they had studied for years and placed in facility-based educational programs that could not provide comparable classes, credits, peer relationships, or extracurricular activities. Opportunities for social engagement are limited to interacting with other children in the facility, and can sometimes be limited to one other child or be non-existent.
At the New Haven press conference, clinicians from the Yale Child Study Center and Yale Center for Traumatic Stress and Recovery explained that prolonged separation and uncertainty can compound existing trauma and interfere with healthy development, particularly for younger children. In the case of the five-year-old, Dr. Laine Taylor, Chief Medical Officer of The Village for Families and Children, who evaluated the child in ORR custody concluded that: Being held for months with limited visitation with her mother were conditions that “exceed what would be considered developmentally tolerable stress and warrant serious clinical concern.”
Access to Legal Representation Is Also at Risk
The crisis extends beyond how long children are detained.
At the end of July, the national federal contract supporting legal services for unaccompanied children expired after months of withholding funds from existing legal service providers. Federal funding to facilitate access to legal counsel is required by a 2008 law and supports know-your-rights presentations, legal screenings, individual representation in immigration proceedings, and regular access to children inside federally contracted facilities.
The contract that expired had funded a nationwide network of non-profits providing legal services to 20,000 detained children. On August 4, ORR revealed that it had signed a new contract with a 26-person Houston-based law firm without expertise in immigration law or experience representing detained youth, raising serious concerns about detained children’s access to adequate legal counsel.
Attorneys are often the only independent people regularly checking on children, examining whether their rights are being respected, and challenging unlawful detention. Without legal support, a child may be expected to navigate complex immigration and deportation proceedings alone.
On Connecticut Public’s The Wheelhouse, Sabrina Tavi emphasized that litigation had been necessary to secure the release of CCA’s clients. Kids in Need of Defense (KIND) Managing Attorney Tess Reagan explained that legal-service providers may also be the only independent observers with direct access to children and their conditions.
Legal representation can fundamentally alter the outcome of an immigration case. Research cited by CT Insider found that children without attorneys received removal orders at more than twice the rate of children with legal representation, while children represented by attorneys were substantially more likely to receive immigration relief.
More Than Detention Cases
Federal habeas litigation is one urgent part of CCA’s immigration work, but it is not the entire Immigrant Children’s Justice Project.
CCA represents and advocates for immigrant children who may be:
- Seeking legal protection after experiencing abuse, neglect, or abandonment
- Separated from parents or caregivers
- Navigating child-serving systems without a parent
- Living in federal shelters or foster-care placements
- Struggling to access school, special education, health care, or mental health services
CCA also trains and supports pro bono attorneys representing children and youth seeking Special Immigrant Juvenile Status. SIJS can provide a pathway toward lawful permanent residence for eligible immigrant children who cannot safely reunify with one or both parents because of abuse, neglect, abandonment, or a similar basis under state law.
Through CCA’s SIJS Pro Bono Project, volunteer attorneys help children obtain guardianship and necessary findings in Connecticut Probate Court. CCA provides training, legal guidance, and technical assistance throughout that process. The project also works with attorneys, paralegals, interpreters, translators, schools, health-care providers, and community organizations to address the full range of issues affecting children’s safety and stability.
This broader work became even more urgent as federally supported legal programs reduced services and more children were left without attorneys. CCA and its pro bono partners have stepped in to accept additional cases and help children pursue available legal protections.
Bringing the Crisis Into Public View
Much of the public understanding of this crisis has been made possible by the careful, sustained reporting of CT Insider investigative reporters Jacqueline Rabe Thomas and Joshua Eaton.
Over three months, they examined court records and documented the experiences of six children held in Connecticut for 100 days or longer. They spoke with experts in the field to understand the sponsorship delays, legal challenges, educational disruption, and emotional harm children experienced while separated from their families. Their reporting brought these cases into public view while protecting the children’s identities and safety. The investigation was followed by broader media attention and action from elected officials.
Following the investigation, Senator Richard Blumenthal raised the case of the five-year-old held for 118 days during a U.S. Senate forum on immigration detention. Connecticut Public devoted an episode of The Wheelhouse to unaccompanied children and the federal resettlement process, featuring CCA’s Immigrant Children’s Justice Project Director and Senior Attorney Sabrina Tavi, KIND Managing Attorney Tess Reagan, and investigative reporter Jacqueline Rabe Thomas.
Representative Rosa DeLauro later convened advocates, attorneys, clinicians, and local leaders at New Haven City Hall to call for an end to prolonged detention and the preservation of legal representation for children. Martha Stone and Sabrina Tavi spoke on behalf of CCA and the children the organization represents with co-counsel Koskoff.
The press conference also included New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker, KIND, and clinicians from the Yale Child Study Center and Yale Center for Traumatic Stress and Recovery. Speakers drew attention to the developmental harm caused by prolonged separation and uncertainty, as well as the expiration of the federal legal-services contract and the risk that children could lose access to independent counsel.
CCA is grateful to the reporters and media organizations that have helped ensure these children and their experiences are not invisible.
CCA Immigration Advocacy in the News
CT Insider: “5-year-old spent 118 days alone in federal immigration custody in CT before reuniting with her mom”
Jacqueline Rabe Thomas and Joshua Eaton examine the repeated delays that kept a young child separated from her mother and in federal custody.
CT Insider: “Six immigrant children spent as long as 505 days in federal custody as their families waited”
The investigation documents six Connecticut cases and the legal action that ultimately helped bring the children home.
CT Insider: “5 changes that could help immigrant children detained in Connecticut”
The follow-up examines faster sponsor processing, guaranteed legal representation, state oversight, educational protections, and post-release support.
Connecticut Public: “Unaccompanied and unprotected?”
Sabrina Tavi joins The Wheelhouse to explain why children’s detention has become prolonged and how federal litigation helped secure the release of CCA’s clients.
Connecticut Public: “Unaccompanied migrant children in federal custody may lose legal aid”
The report examines the expiration of the national legal-services contract and what the loss of legal support could mean for children held in Connecticut.
CT Insider: “DeLauro accuses Trump administration of intentionally delaying immigrant children’s release”
Coverage of the New Haven press conference includes remarks from Martha Stone, Sabrina Tavi, Representative DeLauro, local leaders, and child-trauma experts.
What You Can Do
The current situation is urgent, but there are concrete ways to reduce the time children spend in custody and protect them while they wait.
Advocates have identified several needed changes:
- Faster federal processing of sponsorship applications, with ORR complying with the law and its own policies, and clear and enforceable deadlines
- Guaranteed legal representation for children in federal custody
- Meaningful, accredited education and credit for coursework completed in custody
- Trusted post-release support connecting children with attorneys, schools, counseling, and community services
Members of the public can urge federal officials to reunite children promptly with qualified family members and ask Connecticut policymakers to support legal representation, educational protections, appropriate oversight, and post-release services.
Attorneys, paralegals, interpreters, and translators can support CCA’s Special Immigrant Juvenile Status Pro Bono Project. Please contact Sabrina Tavi at stavi@cca-ct.org if you’d like to get involved.
Community members can also help by sharing accurate reporting, speaking out for children’s rights, and supporting the legal advocacy that makes reunification possible.
A donation to CCA helps provide immigrant children with legal representation, challenge prolonged detention, connect families with support, and ensure children are not left to navigate complex systems alone.
Donate to protect immigrant children’s rights.
The Work Continues
Immigrant children are like any other children.
They need families, schools, trusted adults, stability, and the freedom to grow. They should not have to wait months or over one year to leave a temporary facility or depend on a federal lawsuit to reunify with a parent or relative who is ready to care for them. They should not be expected to defend themselves in immigration court alone. And they should not become invisible simply because their names and faces must remain private.
CCA will continue representing children, challenging unlawful detention, supporting pro bono attorneys to expand access to justice, protecting access to education and services, and speaking publicly when policies and government actions place children at risk.
As one young client reminded us after being released from ORR custody after 143 days and returning home: “I’m not just a memory.”
We cannot allow the children who are still waiting be just a memory either.
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