The Trump administration has filed a legal motion aiming to terminate the Flores Settlement Agreement, a decades-old court ruling that sets minimum standards for the treatment and release of unaccompanied migrant children in U.S. custody. Immigrant rights advocates are preparing to challenge this effort.
The Flores Agreement, established in 1997, mandates that migrant children must be transferred quickly from jail-like detention centers to child-appropriate, state-licensed facilities. It also requires that children be held in safe, sanitary conditions with access to basic necessities such as soap, toothpaste, adequate food, and water.
Mishan Wroe, an immigration attorney with the National Center for Youth Law, emphasized that these standards represent the bare minimum to protect vulnerable children, far less than what anyone would want for their own kids. She criticized the government’s refusal to be held accountable to these basic protections as deeply troubling.
This is not the first time the Trump administration has tried to dissolve the agreement. During Trump’s first term, attempts to end the Flores settlement were unsuccessful. The current legal argument contends that immigration laws and circumstances have significantly changed since the agreement’s inception, given the increased number of migrant children and different policies now in place. Additionally, the administration claims that the district court overseeing the settlement no longer has jurisdiction.
A court hearing on this motion is scheduled for July 18.
Coinciding with this legal move, House Republicans recently passed a historic budget bill that, if signed into law, would provide over $160 billion in new funding for immigration and border enforcement, including $45 billion allocated to adult and family detention facilities.
Immigrant advocates warn that scrapping the Flores protections will expose vulnerable children to harsher detention conditions and delay their release, undermining decades of legal safeguards designed to protect their rights and wellbeing.
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