Federal judge orders U.S. to stop detaining migrant children in outdoor camps
A federal judge says Border Patrol officers have illegally held hundreds of immigrant youths in unsheltered detention sites without adequate food or protection. A federal judge has ordered the U.S. government to stop detaining migrant children in outdoor camps since late 2022, violating a legally binding 1997 settlement signed by federal officials. The court ordered immigration officers to stop sending minors to such sites and reunite them with their parents or adult relatives. The practice began in October 2022 when large numbers of migrants began crossing the border. The detainees were placed at seven open-air sites in the desert, where temperatures ranged from 110 degrees to 20 degrees in the winter, before being moved to indoor detention centers. The judge ruled that the detainees were supposed to get a meal every six hours and two hot meals a day, but their daily supply was one bottle of water and a package of crackers. The National Center for Youth Law welcomed the court's decision, calling it a "tragic" failure to act on basic human decency and the law.
Published : a month ago by Bob Egelko in Politics
Saying the government’s practices since late 2022 have violated a legally binding settlement federal officials signed 25 years earlier, U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee ordered immigration officers on Wednesday to stop sending minors to the unprotected detention sites and to reunite them with their parents or other adult relatives.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection said it was reviewing the ruling, and did not say whether it would appeal. “CBP will continue to transport vulnerable individuals and children encountered on the border to its facilities as quickly as possible,” said Jason Givens, a spokesperson for the agency.
The practice began in October 2022 when large numbers of migrants began crossing the border west of San Ysidro. After taking them into custody, Gee said in her ruling, the Border Patrol placed them for hours or several days at seven open-air sites in the desert, where temperatures ranged from over 110 degrees in the summer to just 20 degrees in the winter, before moving them to indoor detention centers.
Sanitation at the outdoor sites consisted of a few handwashing and water stations that were quickly filled with trash and dirt, Gee said. Under federal standards, she said, the detainees were supposed to get a meal every six hours and two hot meals a day, but instead, according to testimony, their daily supply was one bottle of water and a package of crackers. Gee said she also received testimony that U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents ignored calls for medical help.
She ruled that the government was violating a 1997 legal agreement, known as the Flores settlement, that requires U.S. immigration officials who take minors into custody to place them in the “least restrictive setting available.” They must then be released, without unnecessary delay, to a parent, adult relative or legal guardian, or, if none is available, they must be freed and placed with a program that provides education and social services.
President Donald Trump’s administration sought to end the Flores settlement in 2019, saying it was unneeded and unworkable, arguments Gee rejected in 2020. President Joe Biden’s administration has not challenged the settlement — although it has proposed regulations that could replace it — but its lawyers argued that the youths in the current case were not actually in Border Patrol custody and therefore were not covered by Flores.
Gee disagreed. The officers’ agency, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, “exerts control over (the youths’) health, welfare, and physical movement” at the outdoor detention sites, she said. And she added that the unclean, foul-smelling sites, where youths often must relieve themselves outdoors, violate the settlement’s requirement of “safe and sanitary” facilities.
The judge told the government to stop sending minors to open-air sites and to put them in contact with adult relatives who were arrested. She ordered Customs and Border Protection to notify a court-appointed monitor by May 10 on the number of minors it was detaining and on how it was complying with her ruling.
“After more than a year of children unnecessarily suffering in open air detention sites, we are thrilled the court agrees that the government has been violating the Flores settlement by holding children in filthy and unsafe conditions, failing to provide children with appropriate food, and not processing children as expeditiously as possible,” said attorney Mishan Wroe, who argued the case for the National Center for Youth Law.
Though she welcomed the ruling, Desai, the group’s immigration director, said “it remains a tragedy that a court had to direct the government to do what basic human decency and the law clearly require.”
Topics: Social Issues, Immigration