Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers put teenagers in shackles and moved them from a shelter for unaccompanied minors to an adult detention center on their eighteenth birthdays, according to The Miami New Times.
"When they turn 18, it's basically, 'Happy birthday,' and then they slap on handcuffs and take them off to adult detention centers," Lisa Lehner, an attorney with the nonprofit Americans for Immigrant Justice who is representing one young immigrant, told the newspaper.
According to Lehner, at least 14 other teens in the Homestead Temporary Shelter for Unaccompanied Children in South Miami-Dade have been handcuffed on their 18th birthdays and moved to a jail cell in the Broward Transitional Center, which the New Times describes as "an infamous immigration jail."
Americans for Immigrant Justice have filed seven lawsuits on behalf of teenage immigrants, five of whom were subsequently released to relatives or guardians.
"We've been successful in filing these petitions and getting ICE to act, but it would be much better if ICE would just stop this process in the first place," Lehner said. "The law is crystal clear."
ICE spokesperson Nestor Yglesias told the newspaper that the agency "conducts targeted enforcement in compliance with federal law and agency policy."
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