Law360 (September 15, 2026, 10:39 PM EDT) -- The D.C. Circuit tore into the Trump administration Tuesday morning after a government attorney refused to answer how long an Office of Refugee Resettlement approval of a sponsor for an "unaccompanied" child lasts, even when the court whittled the time down to a matter of hours.

U.S. Circuit Judge Patricia Millett pushed Joshua McCroskey of the U.S. Department of Justice to explain exactly when an ORR sponsor approval ended, since the four children at the center of the appeal were held in detention despite having previously approved adults willing to take them.

McCroskey kept maintaining that the law requires the ORR to make a "present tense determination" that the sponsor is suitable, even in a hypothetical situation posed by the court where the office had just released a child into a sponsor's custody only for them to be "snatched up" in an immigration raid 12 hours later.

"Do you really want to tell me you think the statute requires you to start all over again?" Judge Millett asked.

McCroskey would only say that the agency would have to "make the determination required by the statute."

"How are you, as a lawyer, looking at statutory text?" Judge Millett pressed. "If I'm your general counsel and I come to you and I say, 'Does this still satisfy this present tense requirement in the statute? It's been 12 hours.'"

Later, Judge Millett narrowed the window to five hours, suggesting there was "traffic on the beltway."

"Would it be reasonable for them to say, 'Sorry, five hours, gotta start all over again?'" she asked. "Unless you're here instantaneously, as soon as we decide that the person is approved, it's not gonna be present. Would that be a rational agency decision?"

Judge Millett grew more frustrated as the exchange went on.

"Your whole argument is about here's what the statute says. I'm asking you your statutory interpretation. Answer my question," she said. "It took me five hours to get here — accident on the beltway — to come pick up the child that you just approved for me to sponsor five hours before. And you can't answer whether the statute allows them to say, 'Great, still the same day, nothing's changed. Your sponsorship is still valid.'"

Toward the end of arguments, U.S. Circuit Judge J. Michelle Childs jumped in to tell McCroskey she still wasn't "clear that you have a process that does not elongate all of this ... just makes it go on and on, for months at a time."

"And then that's at the disadvantage of the child," she continued. "Is there any time that you've already found the appropriate sponsor, whether it's parent or other, and then you use your ability to have discretion with respect to waivers of other processes, and then they just get back in a timely manner?"

McCroskey said he was only prepared to talk about the circumstances of the four children subject to the appeal.

The immigrant children plaintiffs want an injunction blocking the Trump administration from implementing its policy requiring already approved custodians to reapply to sponsor "unaccompanied" children if the minors are detained in government facilities.

All four minors named in the appeal — Diego, Renesmee, Mario and Benito — had been released to sponsors, usually relatives, after being detained by immigration officials. But since being redetained, the government is making them remain in detention until their sponsors reapply, according to their February lawsuit.

But many previously approved sponsors cannot complete the process again due to their immigration status, they said.

The D.C. federal judge overseeing the case denied the preliminary injunction in April, leading to the appeal.

U.S. Circuit Judges Cornelia Pillard, J. Michelle Childs and Patricia Millett sat on the panel for the D.C. Circuit.

The government is represented by Joshua C. McCroskey of the U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Division.

The minors are represented by Mishan Wroe of the National Center for Youth Law.

The case is Diego N. et al. v. HHS et al., case number 26-5157, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

--Editing by Adam LoBelia.

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