Immigrant Students Need Protection; Instead, Trump Is Leaving Them in Limbo

Sonia is 20 years old and dreams of being a nurse. She has lived in the United States since the age of 11. Her father abandoned her at birth, in her home country of Mexico. Here, Sonia learned English. She graduated from high school. She earned a scholarship to college. All while living with the fear of deportation and the feeling she would never fully belong.

When Sonia was in high school, she learned that she qualified for humanitarian immigration relief. (I’m using an alias for Sonia’s protection.) Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS) would allow her to apply for lawful permanent residence and eventually US citizenship. Sonia also discovered that while she waited for permanent relief, she would be protected from deportation and could apply for work authorization. Suddenly, her fear was supplanted by hope.

A 1990 law created SIJS, paving a pathway to citizenship for certain abused, abandoned, or neglected children. US Citizenship and Immigration Services would grant SIJS to kids once a state court judge determined they had suffered maltreatment and that it was not in their best interest to return home. When the law originally passed, SIJS recipients could immediately apply for green cards.

However, after more and more children began to flee parental maltreatment, food insecurity, and other dangers in their homes and entreat the United States government for protection, a backlog developed. Beginning in 2016, these vulnerable youth were pushed into limbo as they waited for years for lawful status.

When she was but days away from being able to enroll in a nursing program, this cruel policy reversal deprived Sonia of the chance to fulfill her life’s goal.

Acknowledging the perversity of identifying these kids as needing protection but then failing to provide it, the Biden administration instituted the SIJS Deferred Action Policy in March of 2022. This policy offered most SIJS recipients protection from deportation and the ability to apply for work authorization. With work authorization came social security numbers, which opened access to driver licenses, healthcare and insurance, higher education, bank accounts and more.

Deferred action allowed these young people to come out of the shadows; to name themselves and be counted; to live with dignity in the country that had become their home.

Many SIJS kids, like Sonia, lived their entire lives dreaming of this kind of freedom, which those of us born in the United States take for granted. They deserve, as all children do, the chance to be children. To worry about getting their homework done, not whether they will be scooped up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement on their way to school.

The thing Sonia desperately needed was a social security number. When a teacher in her Certified Nursing Assistant classes noticed her abilities and her commitment to the field, she encouraged Sonia and helped her get a college scholarship so she could continue her education. She took all the prerequisites she could, but there came a point where she could not continue without a social security number.

Sonia was resourceful. She found a local attorney to represent her. Unfortunately, that lawyer delayed filing her petition so long that Sonia aged out of eligibility. Luckily, Sonia lives in Illinois and a change in state law gifted her a second chance. Determined to get status, Sonia traveled across the state in search of a new lawyer. She found me.

I met Sonia in February 2024, when she was 19. Though I have completed close to 80 similar cases since founding the Immigration Law Clinic at the University of Illinois College of Law in 2019, Sonia’s situation was particularly compelling. The circumstances that made her eligible for an immigration benefit were not unique, but the circumstances that brought Sonia to me were.

When I heard what happened to Sonia, I was desperate to end her immigration status roller coaster. My students and I eagerly got to work for her. Finally, in December 2024, we submitted Sonia’s SIJS petition and excitedly waited to hear the government’s decision on her case.

In April, federal immigration authorities granted Sonia SIJS, officially acknowledging that she needs and deserves our country’s protection on a permanent basis. However, her approval notice lacked the language that most SIJS approval notices since March 2022 have included—language granting the recipient deferred action. Sonia later learned that earlier that month, quietly and without explanation, the Trump administration abruptly stopped considering SIJS applicants for deferred action.

For months, the government failed to acknowledge any such change. It was not until June that the administration officially announced the new policy. It stated that “a juvenile court determination relating to the best interest” of children is not a “sufficiently compelling” reason to protect them from deportation and allow them to legally sustain themselves while here.

Sonia was devastated. And she was not alone. If adjudications and approvals maintain pace with the first two quarters of the fiscal year, by the end of this month over 60,000 more SIJS recipients will be officially deemed worthy of our government’s protection… yet simultaneously denied that protection. And many of them will have only made the decision to come forward seeking protection and making themselves all the more vulnerable, because of a belief that doing so would put an end to their fears of deportation, and set them on a path to stability and safety.

In July, the National Immigration Project, with others, filed a proposed class action lawsuit challenging the termination of the SIJS deferred action policy and seeking a court order reinstating it. Oral arguments on a preliminary injunction, which would force the federal government to resume consideration of SIJS youth for deferred action, were held on September 4, and the court could issue a decision at any moment.

But even if the judge orders a reinstatement of deferred action, it will only be a temporary fix. The administration will search for legal routes to strip SIJS youth of the tenuous protection provided by deferred action. We need a legislative change to keep them safe.

Sonia wants to be a nurse so she can heal people. She wants to support her family and make her grandmother proud. She wants to help people in her community who do not speak English by giving them access to effective and responsive healthcare. When she was but days away from being able to enroll in a nursing program, this cruel policy reversal deprived Sonia of the chance to fulfill her life’s goal.

And it deprived her community and our country of a compassionate, dedicated bilingual nurse.

While we wait for judicial or congressional intervention, Sonia’s future and the futures of tens of thousands of other deserving young people hang in the balance.