White House moves to detain children longer
The Trump administration on Thursday moved to abandon a longstanding court settlement that limits how long immigrant children can be kept locked up, proposing new regulations that would allow the government to detain families until their immigration cases are decided.
Homeland Security officials said that ending the so-called Flores agreement of 1997 will speed up the handling of asylum requests while also deterring people from illegally crossing the Mexican border.
The move angered immigrant rights advocates and is all but certain to trigger a court battle.
“It is sickening to see the United States government looking for ways to jail more children for longer,” said Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project. “And it’s yet another example of the Trump administration’s hostility toward immigrants resulting in a policy incompatible with the most basic human values.”
The Flores agreement requires the government to keep children in the least restrictive setting possible and to release them generally after 20 days in detention. For decades, because of those restrictions, many parents and children caught trying to slip into the country have been released into the U.S. while their asylum requests wind their way through the courts — a practice President Donald Trump has decried as “catch-and-release.”
Such cases can drag on for years, and some immigrants stop showing up to court when it becomes clear their asylum requests are going to be denied.
The newly proposed rules would allow the government to hold families in detention until their cases are completed.
Homeland Security did not say how long it expects families to be kept locked up. But immigration officials say asylum cases involving detained families move much more quickly, taking months instead of years to resolve, in part because there are none of the delays that result when immigrants set free in the U.S. fail to show up for a hearing.
“Today, legal loopholes significantly hinder the department’s ability to appropriately detain and promptly remove family units that have no legal basis to remain in the country,” said Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. “This rule addresses one of the primary pull factors for illegal immigration and allows the federal government to enforce immigration laws as passed by Congress.”
Earlier this summer, a federal judge in California rejected a request by the administration to modify Flores to allow for longer family detention. Administration officials say they have the authority to terminate the agreement, but that is likely to be tested in court.