The organization is fighting what it says is a Trump administration policy of blocking undocumented minors’ access to abortion.
The American Civil Liberties Union is asking a judge to stop the government from preventing two undocumented teenagers, who are in federal custody, from seeking abortions, according to court papers filed on Friday.
In the documents, filed around 6 p.m. in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in Washington, the A. C. L. U. asked for a temporary restraining order on behalf of the teenagers, both 17 and identified as Jane Roe and Jane Poe.
Brigitte Amiri, a senior staff attorney for the A. C. L. U., said in an interview on Friday night that the organization had learned of the teenagers’ situations this week and was able to make contact with them on Thursday and Friday.
Their circumstances echo that of another undocumented teenager whose case set off a monthlong legal fight by the A. C. L. U. with the Trump administration. She had an abortion one day after a court ruling in October forced federal officials to allow it.
Ms. Amiri said a policy adopted by the Trump administration in March prohibits shelters under federal contract from taking any steps to help an undocumented minor in custody from getting an abortion.
The A. C. L. U. has accused the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement of trying to delay and interfere with the abortion decisions of other pregnant undocumented teenagers in its custody.
In the case of the two 17-year-olds, the A. C. L. U. wants to stop the government from requiring them to get counseling from “an anti-abortion entity, including a crisis pregnancy center” or coercing them to carry their pregnancies to term, court papers said.
A spokesman for the resettlement office could not be immediately reached by email or phone on Friday night.
Citing security and privacy concerns, Ms. Amiri declined to identify where the teenagers were being held or their countries of origin. The teenagers, who were being held in separate shelters, are awaiting adjudication and could be granted asylum, deported or reunited with their families.
One of them is in her second trimester and nearing the limit for when she can legally get an abortion in the state where she now lives. The other is in her first trimester but can no longer have an abortion induced by medication and would require a surgical procedure, Ms. Amiri said.
In a separate but related court action, the A. C. L. U. has filed a class-action lawsuit seeking to stop the Trump administration’s policies of interfering with any unaccompanied minors’ access to abortion.
Ms. Amiri said the government had recorded 420 undocumented pregnant minors who were unaccompanied by their parents in the 2017 fiscal year, with 18 of them making requests for an abortion. Of those, 11 got an abortion, five rescinded their requests and two were reunified with sponsors, who can be a family member or family friend in the United States, according to court filing by the government in November. The A. C. L. U. believes the reported number is artificially low because of the government’s interference. She said some of those requests were granted in that fiscal year, which straddled the Obama administration, but it was not immediately clear how many.
Ms. Amiri said in a statement the Trump administration had been “relentless in its cruelty, blocking abortion access for the most marginalized people in our country.”
