A child developed a rash after preventing changing their underwear for four days. A little boy, bored and defeated with despair, started to strike in the head. A child with autism and attention / hyperactivity deficit disorder was forced to do without his medication, despite his mother’s calls.
“I heard an officer say about us ‘they feel like sh–‘,” a detained person said in a federal judicial file. “And another officer replied:” They are sh–. “”
Lawyers for immigrant children have collected these stories, and even more, young people and families detained in what they called “prison” contexts in the United States from March to June, even if the Trump administration asked a judge of the Federal District Tribunal licensed the existing protections which oblige fundamental rights and services – including safe and health conditions – for children owned by the government.
The administration argues that the protections mandated under the fact that the flora settlement agreement encourages immigration and interferes with its ability to establish an immigration policy. The judge of the American district court Dolly Gee, who is in California, is expected to make a decision on the request after a hearing of August 8.
With the agreement of flora in place, children are held in customs and protection of “dangerous and unsanitary” American border protection “such as tents, airports and offices that can go up to several weeks despite the written policy of the agency claiming that people should not generally be detained under its custody for more than 72 hours, according to the June immigrant lawyer. In addition to opposing the United States Ministry of Justice, he can ask to end the Flores consent decree, lawyers demanded more follow -up of children in immigration detention.
“The biggest fear is that without flora, we will lose a crucial line of transparency and responsibility,” said Sergio Perez, executive director of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, based in California. “Then you have a perfect storm for the abuse of individuals, the violation of their rights and the type of treatment that this country does not represent.”
The Flores agreement has established minimum standards and surveillance of immigrant children held since 1997, when it ended a complaint for a decade filed in the name of unaccompanied immigrant minors which had been subjected to poor treatment in unsafe and unsanitary conditions without access to medical care. He bears the name of Jenny Lisette Flores, a 15 -year -old from Salvador who was placed in police custody in the mid -1980s, subject to depression research and hosted alongside unrelated men.
The agreement has established national standards for the protection of immigrant children held by the federal authorities, with requirements for safe and health detention establishments, access to drinking water, appropriate food, clothing, bedding, leisure and education possibilities, sanitation, as well as appropriate medical and mental care. Children in detention of immigrants go from infants to adolescents.
In 2015, GEE judged that the agreement includes children accompanied by adults.
The Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Internal Security, which includes both the customs and border protection agency and the application of immigration and customs, refused to answer questions about the intention of the administration to end the Flores agreement or on the conditions under which children are held. In a judicial file in May, government prosecutors argued, among other things, that the agreement is poorly directed immigration decisions before the courts, not the White House. The American prosecutor General Pam Bondi also said that the Flores agreement had “encouraged illegal immigration” and that the congress and federal agencies have solved the problems that Flores was designed to solve.
ICE detention facilities have “highest standards,” said Abigail Jackson, White House spokesperson, in an email in Kff Health News. “They are safe, clean and hold illegal foreigners who expect final dismissal procedures.”
Lawyers and immigration researchers have rejected the idea that the Flores agreement encourages migration, arguing that the conditions in the countries of origin of people push them to move.
President Trump is not the first president to try to modify or end the agreement.
In 2016, the administration of President Barack Obama looked out without success to exempt minors accompanied by the Flores agreement, arguing that an influx of immigrants from Central America had overwhelmed the system.
In 2019, following a policy that caused the separation of families, the first Trump administration announced that it would replace Flores with new regulations to extend family detention and eliminate detention times. The courts also rejected this plan.
In 2024, the administration of President Joe Biden successfully asked to withdraw the Ministry of Health and Social Services from the Agreement after the refugee resettlement office incorporated certain flora standards into agency regulations.
The allegations of dangerous conditions under the agreement also predates this last repression of immigration under Mr. Trump. A 2019 legal file said that lawyers visiting two Texas detention centers had found at least 250 infants, children and adolescents, some of whom had been detained in the establishment for almost a month. “The children were dirty and wore clothes covered with body liquids, including urine,” said the file.
Seven children are known to have died in federal detention from 2018 to 2019, according to media reports.
And in 2023, 8 years old Anitith Danay Reyes Alvarez fell ill and died during his customs and the border guard in Texas for nine days. His parents had given medical records detailing the girl’s medical history, including diagnoses of sickle cell anemia and congenital heart disease when they are detention. However, his mother Repeated presidencies For emergency medical care, care has been ignored.
His family filed an unjustified death request in May.
Lawyers attributed the death in part to prolonged detention in increasingly congested and delayed medical care. Officials said they had increased medical services and recognized failures In the wake of the dead.
But with the unprecedented pressure of the Trump administration to hold and expel migrants – including families – the threat to the health of children caught in these scannings is defenders of alarming children.
“Very rarely, you have points in the populations of folk detained that you do not see a radical decrease in the quality of their medical care,” said Daniel Hatoum, a main supervision lawyer from Civil Texas Rights Project, one of the groups that has filed the unjustified death complaint for the family of Anadith.
Recent reports of monitors appointed by the court cite a continuous lack of access to appropriate medical care; extreme temperature; Few outdoor leisure possibilities; lack of food and appropriate clothes; And an inability to alleviate the lights to sleep.
The termination of the Flores agreement will remove all external surveillance of immigration detention installations by monitors and lawyers ordered by the court. The public should depend on the government for the transparency of the conditions under which children are held.
“Our system requires that there is a certain surveillance for the government, not just the Ministry of Internal Security, but in general,” said Hatoum. “We know it. So I don’t think the DHS can police him.”
During the months following the start of Mr. Trump and that the Elon Musk government’s Ministry of Effectiveness began, the administration closed DHS for civil rights and civil freedoms, the Ombudsman office of citizenship and immigration services, and the office of the ombud of immigration detention, which was to add a layer of oblivion. After a trial, the Trump administration reversed the action and noted that the offices would remain open, but it is not known how these offices were affected by the policy changes and the reductions in the endowment.
Leecia Welch, lawyer for the children’s rights for children’s rights, said the Flores itself, or efforts to keep the government responsible for the respect of its requirements, are not rooted in partisan policy. She said that she also expressed her concerns about the conditions during the Biden administration.
“These are not political problems for me,” said Welch. “How does our country want to treat children? That’s it. This is very simple. I’m not going to relax on any administration where children are injured at their expense.”
Kff Health News is a national editorial room that produces in -depth journalism on health problems and is one of the main operating programs in Kff – The independent source of research on health policies, survey and journalism.
