After a Los Angeles federal judge rejected the Trump administration’s bid to end a 28-year-old edict governing how immigrant children are detained, attorneys stressed Tuesday that the government remains legally obligated to promptly process, transfer and release such children as quickly as possible.
The so-called “Flores settlement agreement” — overseen by U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee in Los Angeles federal court — remains one of the only legal tools to prevent the prolonged incarceration of immigrant children detained at U.S. border crossings.
Despite the required protections, attorneys for detained children have presented evidence they say shows migrant children are being subjected to “prolonged detention in punitive, prison-like conditions.” Many are confined for weeks or even months in U.S. Customs and Border Protection facilities, detention sites intended only for short-term processing, where conditions are wholly inappropriate and harmful for children, the attorneys argued in court papers.
“These CBP facilities are cruel, barren, and psychologically scarring to children,” Sarah Kahn, senior staff attorney with the Center for Human Rights & Constitutional Law, said in a statement Tuesday. “No child should be in a prison for any amount of time. This order will help to shorten the imprisonment of children and move them promptly out of the worst and most traumatizing facilities.”
According to immigrant rights lawyers, migrant children are frequently detained at CBP border stations and ports of entry in California and elsewhere.
In the months after the second Trump administration took office, detention of families in these stations became prolonged, sometimes for a month or more, plaintiffs’ attorneys allege.
The only long-term family detention center run by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is located in the South Texas town of Dilley. A recent court order requires that migrant children be rapidly moved out of CBP facilities. Many of these children will be sent to ICE in Texas for detention as the government continues their removal proceedings and determines whether they will be deported or released.
“All of these facilities are prisons and any amount of time there is permanently scarring to children, but CBP border stations and ports of entry are the most restrictive and inhumane, and some of the worst of these border facilities are in California,” according to CHRCL.
In her ruling issued Friday, Gee wrote that the government has failed “to identify any new facts or law that warrant the termination of the Flores Settlement Agreement at this time.”
Approved in 1997, the settlement — named for lead plaintiff Jenny Lisette Flores, a 15-year-old detainee when the class-action complaint was filed in 1985 — requires that children be held in licensed, child-appropriate facilities and released to family members or guardians as quickly as possible. Under the terms of the settlement, Flores co-counsel are permitted to visit detention sites where children are being held and hear directly from them about their treatment and the duration of their detention.
Lawyers for the federal government had argued that the agreement is out of date and needed to be dissolved in order to reflect changes brought by the second Trump administration, including modifications to law, compliance, “facts,” shifts in policies and executive function.
During a hearing before Gee on Aug. 8, U.S. Justice Department attorney Tiberius Davis told the judge that the Flores settlement was unusual in that it “dictates the operation of immigration law,” which should not be under the supervision of the court.
But Gee countered, “It does not dictate the operation of immigration law,” explaining that the agreement dictates the conditions of children in immigration custody. Moreover, Gee said, the government bound itself to the consent decree nearly 30 years ago.
Immigrant-rights groups have alleged ongoing violations of the settlement’s protections, including the long-term detention of migrant children in punitive conditions at border stations.
Arguing for the plaintiffs against the government’s motion to terminate, CHRCL attorney Carlos Holguin said the government wanted to terminate the settlement “so it can detain children for as long as it wishes … given this administration’s propensity for hardship on children.”
Joshua McCroskey, a Justice Department attorney, responded that “there have always been difficult cases where processing takes longer periods of time. … CBP does try to transfer minors out of its custody as quickly as possible.”
At the hearing, the court addressed conditions that directly affect children’s well-being, including freezing temperatures and lights that stay on all night.
Gee found that Flores co-counsel had shown the government was in “substantial noncompliance” with the agreement, leaving children exposed to unsafe conditions. She ordered that children be kept in safe, comfortable temperatures and that lights be dimmed or turned off at night so they can sleep.
“Every time I have visited a CBP border station, children and teenagers alike have described the constant frigid air that blows on them day and night while they sit in holding rooms they are not allowed to leave,” said Becky Wolozin, senior attorney with the National Center for Youth Law.
“One child told me he missed seeing the sun, and the only way he knew the time or day was by keeping track of a clock mounted on a guard surveillance station. The court rightly recognized that CBP facilities are unacceptable places to hold children for prolonged lengths of time.”