Admin: End Immigrant Child Protections 05/23 06:14

   

   McALLEN, Texas (AP) -- The Trump administration is seeking to end an 
immigration policy cornerstone that since the 1990s has offered protections to 
child migrants in federal custody, a move that will be challenged by advocates, 
according to a court filing Thursday.

   The protections in place, known as the Flores Settlement Agreement, largely 
limit to 72 hours the amount of time that child migrants traveling alone or 
with family and detained by the U.S. Border Patrol. They also ensure the 
children are kept in safe and sanitary conditions.

   Government attorneys called the Flores agreement an "intrusive regime" that 
has "ossified" federal immigration policy. In a motion filed Thursday 
afternoon, they contend that the agreement is no longer necessary after 
Congress passed legislation and government agencies enforced policies that also 
implement standards and regulations called for in the agreement.

   They also blamed the agreement for increasing the number of migrant children 
entering the country over the past three decades.

   "The FSA itself has changed the immigration landscape by removing some of 
the disincentives for families to enter the U.S. unlawfully. Unlawful family 
migration barely existed in 1997," they wrote.

   President Donald Trump tried to end the protections during his first term 
and his allies have long railed against it. A separate court filing, submitted 
jointly by the administration and advocates, proposes a hearing on July 18 
before Chief U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee of the Central District of 
California.

   "Children who seek refuge in our country should be met with open arms -- not 
imprisonment, deprivation, and abuse," said Sergio Perez, executive director of 
the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law.

   "The Trump Administration's move to dismiss this agreement, which prevents 
the government from imprisoning children in brutal conditions indefinitely, is 
another lawless step towards sacrificing accountability and human decency in 
favor of a political agenda that demonizes refugees," Perez said.

   The settlement is named for a Salvadoran girl, Jenny Flores, whose lawsuit 
alleging widespread mistreatment of children in custody in the 1980s prompted 
special oversight.

   In August 2019, the first Trump administration asked a judge to dissolve the 
agreement. Its motion eventually was struck down in December 2020 by the 9th 
U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

   Under the Biden administration, oversight protections for child migrants 
were lifted for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services after new 
guidelines were put in place last year.

   The Department of Homeland Security is still beholden to the agreement, 
including Customs and Border Protection, which detains and processes children 
after their arrival in the U.S. with or without their parents. Children then 
are usually released with their families or sent to a shelter operated by HHS, 
though processing times often go up when the number of people entering 
increases in a short time period.

   Even with the agreement in place, there have been instances where the 
federal government failed to provide adequate conditions for children, as in a 
case in Texas where nearly 300 children had to be moved from a Border Patrol 
facility following reports they were receiving inadequate food, water and 
sanitation.

   "I've spent years fighting for children in government custody because I've 
seen the toll detention takes on them -- sleepless nights on cold concrete 
floors with bright lights and no blanket, days or weeks without seeing the sun, 
untreated illness and injuries, and the unbearable trauma of being separated 
from siblings, parents or grandparents," Leecia Welch, the deputy legal 
director at Children's Rights, said Thursday.

   Court-appointed monitors provide oversight of the agreement and report 
noncompliant facilities to Gee. In 2020, a monitor called on the government to 
stop detaining children as young as a year old in hotels before expelling them 
to their home countries. Other monitors also found children were held in 
conditions that exposed them to the COVID-19 virus during the pandemic.

   CBP was set to resume its own oversight but in January a federal judge ruled 
it was not ready and extended the use of court-appointed monitors for another 
18 months.