US judge rejects govt request for long-term child detention

A US federal judge on Monday rejected the Trump administration’s request to allow longterm detention of illegal immigrant children, a legal setback for President Donald Trump’s push to detain immigrant families taken into custody at the US-Mexico border.

Los Angeles US District Court Judge Dolly Gee dismissed as “dubious” and “unconvincing” the US Justice Department’s proposal to modify a 1997 settlement known as the Flores Agreement, which says that children cannot be held in detention for long periods.

The government made its request in June after public outcry over its policy of separating children from parents who entered the US illegally. A judge in a different case in San Diego ordered the government last month to reunite the families.

The government asserted in its Flores filing that the San Diego ruling would necessitate longer-term detention of children, since that would be the only way to both reunite them with their parents and keep the parents incarcerated during their immigration proceedings. Gee rejected that argument. “Defendants advance a tortured interpretation of the Flores Agreement in an attempt to show that the … injunction permits them to suspend the Flores release and licensure provisions,” she wrote.

Trump on Tuesday pushed back against court rulings against his administration’s migrant detention policies.

“I have a solution: Tell people not to come to our country illegally. That’s the solution,” Trump told reporters at the White House a day after a US federal judge rejected longterm detention of illegal immigrant children. “Come legally.”