The Trump administration said Thursday that it would bypass rules set by the 1997 Flores Settlement Agreement, which does not allow for migrant children to be held in detention for more than 20 days.
According to the Department of Homeland Security, the main principles of the agreement will remain the same with the planned change. The DHS added that it would issue new regulations which will guarantee that migrant children “are treated with dignity, respect and special concern for their particular vulnerability as minors.”
A statement by DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said that current protocol allowed for “legal loopholes” which affect the department’s work and due to which it cannot “appropriately detain and promptly remove family units that have no legal basis to remain in the country.”
According to her, the proposed changes would help standardize the way children who arrive in the country without parents or who are removed from their guardians are treated. On the other hand, the alterations are likely to bring the Trump administration back to court. U.S. District Court Judge Dolly M. Gee has already overturned attempts by the administration to strike down the Flores Settlement Agreement.
Democrats criticized the move, deeming it cruel. Democratic National Committee chair Tom Perez said “hundreds of children remain separated from their parents because of this administration’s actions.”
“But instead of reuniting these families, they’re working to circumvent court limits so they can keep children detained for as long as their family’s case is evaluated, a process that can take years. This is an astonishing new low in one of our nation’s darkest hours. And Republicans in Congress refuse to do anything about it,” he continued.
This is not the first such attempt by the Trump administration to detain minors indefinitely. In July, Judge Gee stuck down a request calling it “a cynical attempt…to shift responsibility to the judiciary for over 20 years of congressional inaction.”
The change would also allow U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to create more family detention centers, known as “family residential centers.”
Be the first to comment