Trump moves to end limits on detentions

Advocates allege policy will traumatize immigrant children

WASHINGTON — 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 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 condi

tions 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.”

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 that 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.

The Flores agreement has been in effect since 1997 but mostly was applied to children who came to the country alone. In 2015, U.S. District Court Judge Dolly Gee ruled the requirements were applicable to children who crossed the border with families, after the Obama administration built family detention centers and started detaining families until their cases were completed.

Homeland Security did not say how long it expects families to be kept, but McAleenan said under the previous administration it was about 50 days.

He said, “The intent is for a fair and expeditious proceeding.”

Asylum cases involving detained families move much more quickly than cases for families released, taking months instead of years to resolve, in part because there are none of the delays that result when immigrants fail to show up for hearings.

The government operates three family detention centers that can hold a total of about 3,000 people. One is being used for single adults, and the other two are at capacity.

McAleenan said he didn’t expect to need more bed space because, with other efforts to restrict the flow of migrants, he expects fewer people to be coming.