Judge denies request to indefinitely detain families
A federal judge in California on Monday rejected the White House request to indefinitely detain immigrant families apprehended at the border, calling it an attempt by the federal government to simply “light a match” to a two-decade-old settlement that set strict standards for detaining immigrant children.
U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee in Los Angeles ruled that the administration had no legitimate grounds on which to alter the 1997 settlement agreement, called the Flores Agreement, which established limits on how long immigrant children can be detained. Detaining immigrant minors indefinitely in unlicensed facilities, Gee wrote, “would constitute a fundamental and material breach” of the agreement.
Gee’s ruling softens a significant portion of President Donald Trump’s June executive order that, after a nationwide outcry, ended mass family separations at the border in exchange for mass family detentions. In the executive order, Trump directed Attorney General Jeff Sessions to seek modification of the Flores Agreement so that immigration officials could indefinitely detain families while their cases wind through immigration court.
But a 2016 federal appeals court ruling requires the government to release children from family detention centers within 20 days, in keeping with Flores.
Arguing for indefinite detention, the Justice Department said that it had no other feasible alternative since it could no longer separate families and remains opposed to releasing the families on The ruling leaves the administration sandwiched between court rulings and leaves the so-called “zerotolerance”policy in limbo. The administration is both unable to keep families detained longterm and is also unable to separate families because of a preliminary injunction in San Diego, setting a deadline for reunifications and requiring the 102 youngest children to be reunited with their parents by Tuesday. The government said Monday it could not meet that deadline for nearly half of the children. — WASHINGTON POST bond, a practice that has been called “catch-and-release.”
But Gee disagreed with this assessment, saying the federal government “advanced a tortured interpretation” of the Flores Agreement in making its argument.
“Absolutely nothing prevents Defendants from reconsidering their current blanket policy of family detention and reinstating prosecutorial discretion,” she wrote.
As Gee suggests, prosecutorial discretion would allow for the release of some families on bond until their next court date, while also relieving detention facilities of immense capacity issues. That’s a policy the Trump administration has loathed and an Obama-era practice Trump promised to end while a candidate for president. Nevertheless, as The Washington Post’s Nick Miroff reported last month, the administration was left with little alternative after separations were halted and there was not enough space to hold all the families in existing facilities. Trump’s executive order had called for the construction of more.
The Justice Department did not say whether it would appeal Gee’s ruling.
“We disagree with the court’s ruling declining to amend the Flores Agreement to recognize the current crisis of families making the dangerous and unlawful journey across our southern border,” spokesman Devin O’Malley said in a statement, according to the Associated Press.