Trump Seeks to End Protections for Detained Migrant Children

The Trump administration is moving to end a federal agreement that limits how long immigrant children can be kept in detention. A court fight will almost certainly follow over the government’s desire to hold migrant families until their cases are decided.

The current settlement overseen by the federal courts now requires the government to keep children in the least restrictive setting and to release them as quickly as possible, generally after 20 days in detention.

Homeland Security officials say they are adopting their own regulations that reflect the “Flores agreement,” which has been in effect since 1997, and there is no longer a need for court involvement, which was only meant to be temporary. But the new rules would allow the government to hold families in detention much longer than 20 days.

It is the latest effort by the administration to tighten immigration, President Donald Trump’s signature issue, and is aimed at restricting the movement of asylum seekers in the country and deterring more migrants from crossing the border. The news immediately generated fresh outrage, following reports of dire conditions in detention facilities, and it is questionable whether courts will let the administration move forward with the policy.

Trump defended the decision, saying: “I’m the one that kept the families together.”

The Trump administration is moving to end a long-standing federal court agreement that limits how long immigrant children can be kept in detention, a move that will almost certainly lead to a new court battle over immigration. (Aug. 21)

But immigrant advocates decried it, and said prolonged detention would traumatize immigrant children.

“The government should not be jailing kids, and certainly shouldn’t be seeking to put more kids in jail for longer,” Madhuri Grewal, policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement.

Peter Schey, a lawyer for the immigrant children in the Flores case and president of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, said if the regulations don’t match the settlement in that case, “they would be in immediate material breach, if not contempt of court.”

“I think all these things are now part of the 2020 campaign,” Schey said.

Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan said Wednesday the regulations create higher standards to govern family detention facilities. The facilities will be regularly audited, and the audits made public.

The regulations are expected to be formally published Friday and go into effect in 60 days absent legal challenges.

Holly Cooper, co-director of the immigration law clinic at University of California, Davis and a lawyer in the Flores case, said attorneys haven’t seen the final rule and will have a week to brief a federal judge, who will weigh whether they are consistent with the settlement.

The government’s proposed rule, she said, wouldn’t have let lawyers monitor conditions in border facilities and would have dramatically changed how long children could be detained and the standards for their care.

“We’re going to have a world that looks a lot like the internment of families and children, where we have basically regularized prison as a default for families seeking political asylum in this country,” she told reporters.

The rule follows moves last week to broaden the definition of a “public charge” to include immigrants on public assistance, potentially denying green cards to more immigrants. There was also a recent effort to effectively end asylum altogether at the southern border.

There has been a drastic increase in the number of families crossing the border — about 475,000 so far this budget year, nearly three times the previous full-year record for families. Most are released into the U.S. while their asylum requests wind through the courts — a practice Trump has derided as “catch-and-release.”

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