Immigration attorneys expressed outrage Thursday afternoon as the Trump administration seeks to end a nearly 30-year ruling that gives unaccompanied migrant children basic necessities, including food, water, toothpaste and soap.
The Flores Settlement Agreement is a 1997 legal settlement resulting from a class-action lawsuit that established nationwide standards for the treatment, detention, and release of migrant children in U.S. immigration custody. Under the ruling, children must be held in safe, sanitary, and licensed facilities.
During President Donald Trump’s first term, his administration tried — and failed — to dissolve the deal, Mother Jones noted Thursday. And he's doing so again, this time "using a similar argument now, that circumstances have changed dramatically since the agreement was established decades ago, with different immigration laws in place and far more migrant children."
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"After 40 years of litigation and 28 years of judicial control over a critical element of U.S. immigration policy by one district court located more than 100 miles from any international border, it is time for this case to end," the Justice Department said in its filing, according to CBS News.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, wrote on X that the move was "widely expected," and noted: "They lost every effort to do this in Trump's first term."
A hearing is scheduled for mid-July.
Mishan Wroe, an immigration attorney at the National Center for Youth Law, told the outlet the agreement “provides nothing more than bare minimum protections for vulnerable children—far less than any of us would demand for our own children.
“It requires things like soap, toothpaste and toothbrushes, and adequate food and water. The fact that the government refuses to be held accountable to even these most basic standards to keep children safe speaks volumes," Wroe told Mother Jones.
Anna Núñez, former communications and media strategist at the Texas Immigration Council, shared audio of what she described as the "desperate sobbing of babies in cages" from a ProPublica report in 2018.
"THIS is why Flores Agreement, which Trump seeks to terminate, is important. It's national standards for detention, treatment & release of immigrant children in federal custody."