LOS ANGELES (AP) — For 27 years, federal courts have had special oversight of detention conditions for migrant children. The Biden administration wants a judge to partially revoke that authority.
U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee will consider the request at a hearing in Los Angeles on Friday, less than a week before up-to-date safeguards take effect that the government says meet and in some ways exceed standards set in a landmark settlement named after El Salvadoran immigrant Jenny Flores.
The administration wants to terminate the Flores Agreement with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which requires unaccompanied children to be taken into custody within 72 hours of their apprehension by the Border Patrol. It would remain in effect for the Border Patrol and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security.
Flores is a policy cornerstone that forces the U.S. to quickly release children in custody to families in the country and sets standards for licensed shelters, including food, drinking water, adult supervision, emergency care, toilets, sinks, temperature control and ventilation. Flores grew out of widespread allegations of mistreatment in the 1980s.
Judicial oversight gives lawyers representing migrant children broad powers to visit detention centers and interview staff and other migrants. They can file complaints with Gee, who can order changes.
Lawyers who advocate for migrant children are strongly opposed to the reduction of judicial oversight. They argue, among other things, that the federal government has failed to create a legal framework in the states that have revoked the licenses of facilities that care for migrant children or that may do so in the future.
Texas and Florida – led by Republican governors critical of unprecedented migration flows – revoked licenses in 2021, leaving a gap in oversight that advocates say puts children’s safety at risk.
The Justice Department argues that up-to-date safeguards that take effect July 1 will make Flores unnecessary in health and human services facilities. It says the Health Department will require shelters to meet state licensing standards even if they are unlicensed and will raise the number of visits to those states to ensure they meet the requirements.
Maintaining judicial oversight by the Department of Homeland Security would keep key parts of Flores intact, including a 20-day limit on detention of unaccompanied children and parents traveling with a child. Border Patrol detention facilities were extremely overcrowded as of 2021.
When the Flores Act was enacted in 1997, the care of migrant children was entirely the responsibility of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, which was dissolved six years later with the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. Since 2003, the Department of Health and Human Services has taken custody of unaccompanied children within 72 hours of their apprehension.
The separation turned into a nightmare in 2018, when the Trump administration separated thousands of children from their parents at the border and the two departments’ computers were not properly connected to quickly reunite them.
In 2014, a surge in unaccompanied children at the border drew increased federal attention. Since then, apprehensions of children traveling alone at the Mexican border have increased, topping 130,000 last year. The Department of Health and Human Services releases the huge majority of unaccompanied children to close relatives while immigration judges decide their future.
