Printer-friendly version
Announcement called “cruel and frankly evil”; legal challenges expected
By Miriam Raftery
Photo: Overcrowding of families observed by Homeland Security Office of Inspector General on June 11, 2019 at Border Patrol’s Weslaco, TX, Station. Faces digitally obscured by OIG.
August 21, 2019 (Washington D.C.) – In apparent defiance of a 2015 federal court settlement which limits detention of migrant children and their families to 20 days, the Trump administration has announced plans to adopt new regulations allowing longer detentions—potentially, indefinitely.
The landmark 1997 Flores v. Reno court settlement established humane standards for child immigrants in detention facilities as well as limiting detention time to 20 days. It followed a decade of litigation over Central American children mistreated in federal custody. It was originally applied primarily to unaccompanied minors but a 2015 federal court decision expanded those standards to also apply to children traveling with family members.
Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan claims the new regulations will require that facilities be audited regularly and that audit results be made public, the Associated Press reports.
But the Trump administration has a dismal record on treatment of migrant children thus far. Numerous witnesses including attorneys and doctors have attested to unsanitary conditions, children losing alarming amounts of weight without adequate food or water, young children caring for infants separated from parents, immigration officials refusing to provide toothpaste, toothbrushes, soap or access to showers to distraught children for weeks on end – even refusing donations of items offered by nonprofit groups.
Just last week, a federal appellate court panel rejected arguments by the Trump administration which had claimed that it had no obligation to provide such basic necessities as soap and toothbrushes to detained children. The judges rebuked the administration in a sternly worded opinion that expressed incredulity at the government lawyer’s arguments.
The New York Times reported in February that thousands of children said they were sexually abused while in U.S. detention facilities, heightening the need to protect these vulnerable youngsters.
A court recently order the Trump administration to stop separating migrant children from families after the Trump administration admitted losing track of the whereabouts of thousands of migrant children taken from their parents at the border – many of whom have never been accounted for to this day. A joint investigation by the PBS Frontline series and Associated Press found yet another good reason to prohibit such separations. The series reported that dozens of children separated from their parents were sexually, physically or emotionally abused after being placed in foster care homes.
Physicians have attested that even without sexual or physical abuse, extended detention and/or separation from parents can traumatize children for life.
The Trump administration’s newly announced policy has drawn swift and harsh criticism.
“This is unnecessarily cruel and frankly evil,” Jess Morales Rocketto, chairman of Families Belong Together, told media. He added that it is “ridiculous” to believe that the current administration can be trusted with self-regulation.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued a statement condemning the action, stating, “The administration is seeking to codify child abuse, plain and simple.”
Peter Schey, an attorney who represented migrant children I the Flores case, told Associated Press that regulations not honoring the settlement agreement would be in “immediate material breach, if not contempt of court.”
Thousands of migrant families remain in U.S. detention facilities with over 30,000 more migrants waiting in Mexico for asylum cases to be heard. Asylum is an internationally protected right for people fleeing violence or persecution.
Jenn Piatt is Senior Director of Refugee Resettlement and Asylum Policy and Advocacy at the International Rescue Committee. She says departing from the standards established by the Flores settlement “will only exacerbate the dangerous conditions in detention centers revealed recently by the HHS Inspector General, further subject children to inhumane treatment, and possibly subject children to indefinite detention. Seeking asylum is legal, and nobody – least of all children – should be punished for doing so.”
Piatt says the administration needs a history lesson, then says, “Flores was put into place because the government routinely demonstrated that it was incapable of treating children in civil immigration detention even remotely well.” She adds that immigration children were “subjected to prolonged detention with unrelated adults and criminal offenders, simply for seeking safety. Further, these children were subject to sexually-invasive strip searches, denied basic food and water, and had inadequate access to educational services – all while languishing in detention for years in many cases.
She says that the administration’s new rule does not uphold the spirit of Flores and predicts it will be “Swiftly challenged.”
Recent comments