Trump wages court battle to lift limits on detentions of migrant kids

For more than a quarter-century, the settlement of a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles federal court has defined conditions for children in immigration detention.

But now the long-standing agreement, which sets minimum standards of housing, education and medical care for immigrant children in federal custody and strictly limits how long they can stay there, hangs in the balance in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals after a Trump administration challenge.

At the same time, the federal judge presiding over the settlement in Los Angeles appears poised to appoint a powerful new enforcer to pursue the deal.

President Trump has long been trying to cancel the Flores agreement, which dates back to the Clinton administration. In recent months, the Trump administration has waged a legal battle to scrap the agreement, while also imploring the district court not to order an independent monitor to improve compliance with the deal.

“[Flores] “That’s the only thing standing between them and the indefinite detention of families,” said Leecia Welch, chief legal director for Children’s Rights, one of the plaintiffs in the case.

Last month Atty. Deputy Gen. Brett A. Shumate pressed the 9th Circuit court to respond “up or down” to the administration’s bid to overturn the agreement and end what he called “judicial micromanagement” of federal immigration policy.

“The Flores consent decree is an agreement well above constitutional ground,” Shumate told the court during oral arguments in June. “We are asking this [the Department of Homeland Security’s] “Compliance with the law will be evaluated according to the law, not the 30-year settlement agreement.”

The three-judge panel harshly questioned the Justice Department’s legal arguments and said little had changed since the government last petitioned the court to terminate the agreement in 2020; this request was rejected.

The justices also pressed Trump administration lawyers to respond to evidence from multiple affidavits filed in district court since last summer that described detainees trying to sleep in freezing, brightly lit rooms, vomiting from eating spoiled food and begging for diapers, baby formula and asthma medication.

“You said a lot of the reason you’re doing this is to deter families from coming here, so you’re essentially punishing the kids for their parents bringing them here,” Judge Marsha S. Berzon said.

Berzon, a Clinton appointee who last year issued an impassioned dissent in a lawsuit challenging the administration’s use of armed troops in immigration enforcement operations, asked: “Are you saying there’s no constitutional issue there?”

“I understand that detaining children at the border is a controversial policy issue, but it is a policy decision,” Shumate said.

Just a day earlier, Chief U.S. District Judge Dolly M. Gee scolded a pair of government lawyers from her bench in Los Angeles, signaling that she would likely appoint a new special administrator to force compliance with the settlement agreement.

“We’re talking about 11 years of this,” Gee said at the June 1 status conference. “None of these matters are new to me. These are all matters for which I have given instructions. It is very disturbing to me that my orders are not taken into consideration and followed in good faith.”

“Both sides appear to be operating on different planes of reality,” Gee said.

The controversial solution emerged from a lawsuit filed in 1985 over the fate of a 15-year-old boy. Jenny Flores, A Salvadoran refugee taken by federal immigration and left to languish in custody in Pasadena. At the time, there was little awareness that children were among the tens of thousands of immigrants fleeing civil war and state collapse in Central America; There was virtually no US government infrastructure to protect them.

“It was a surprise,” said Benjamin Roth, a professor at the University of South Carolina College of Social Work and an expert on the agreement. “At the time, it wasn’t thought that children were in the mix.”

The current court fight centers on an immigrant detention center in Dilley, Texas, where the vast majority of children and families in immigration custody are held, run by the private prison company CoreCivic.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in court filings earlier this month that it “maintained essential services for Flores” at Dilley and argued that length-of-stay figures were skewed by the small number of families it was forced to hold because it was deemed a “national security risk.” U.S. Customs and Border Protection likewise boasted that its July 1 report “demonstrates our highest level of compliance to date.”

Immigrant rights advocates called these claims “fiction.”

“We are seeing the same problems, concerns and misery that we have seen for the last 15 months,” said Welch, the Children’s Rights attorney.

In dozens of statements collected as part of court records, detainees described broccoli being filled with worms, diapers being handed out one by one and staff tearing up children’s pictures.

One mother said medical staff laughed at her 8-year-old child’s broken arm. Another said she was denied treatment for hepatitis B even though doctors told her she could develop liver cancer and pass the infection to her unborn daughter.

Others described unexplained rashes, diarrhea outbreaks, and lice infestations, among many other illnesses, only to be prescribed Tylenol or allergy medication. Even Christmas brought misery, with an ICE agent dressed as Santa Claus pushing children away as they tried to hug him, according to statements detainees submitted to the court.

“What happened on Christmas Day can only be described as an atrocity,” one mother recalled. Children “dropped everything, ran towards him, begged for candy and wanted to take pictures. Some children even cried and begged him for their freedom. Santa Claus himself acted quite indifferent.”

The Justice Department has argued that if the Flores deal is resolved, immigrant children could sue for poor conditions. But experts say existing protections would collapse without the legal architecture of the consent decree that supports them.

“[Under the settlement]”The federal government has established a very effective system for providing respite care for children,” Roth said. “If Flores is terminated, challenging those same programs will not be easy.”

If the Trump administration loses before the 9th Circuit, the fight over Flores could soon head to the Supreme Court.

“I would be shocked if the 9th Circuit rules for the government, and I would be shocked if the Trump administration does not object,” said Eric J. Segall, a Georgia State University law professor and supreme court expert.

But consent decrees are legally and politically complex, and the treatment of immigrant children makes the situation even more complicated. Given the legal and political complexity, the Supreme Court could decide to keep the deal in place or refuse to take the case at all, experts said.

“The court is more likely to stay away from this,” Segall said.

For now, both the district judge and the 9th Circuit panel appear fed up.

“I think I’ve run out of patience,” Gee said during the final hearing in a Los Angeles courtroom.