Federal judge blocks Trump administration from detaining migrant children for indefinite periods
Source: Washington Post
A federal judge in Los Angeles has blocked the Trump administration from activating new regulations that would have dramatically expanded its ability to detain migrant children with their parents for indefinite periods of time, dealing a blow to the president’s efforts to tamp down unauthorized border crossings. U.S. District Judge Dolly M. Gee issued the permanent injunction Friday, hours after hearing arguments from the Justice Department and advocates for immigrants in a long-running federal case in the Central District of California.
Lawyers for the Justice Department had urged Gee to allow the Trump administration to withdraw from the Flores Settlement Agreenment, a 1997 federal consent decree that sets basic standards for detaining migrant children. The decree includes a 20-day limit for holding children in detention facilities that have not been licensed by the states for the purpose of caring for minors.
President Trump has called Flores a “loophole” that has enabled hundreds of thousands of families, many from impoverished Central American countries, to cross the southern boundary and claim asylum. Those migrants generally are quickly released into the United States because of the 20-day limit on detaining children. The Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Health and Human Services issued new rules in August that sought to terminate the settlement and lift the 20-day limit by allowing the federal government to license such facilities.
In the ruling Friday, Gee wrote that the regulations “fail to implement and are inconsistent with the relevant and substantive terms of the Flores Settlement Agreement,” and therefore cannot take effect. “The Flores Settlement Agreement remains in effect and has not been terminated,” she wrote.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/federal-judge-blocks-trump-administration-from-detaining-migrant-children-for-indefinite-periods/2019/09/27/49a39790-e15f-11e9-b199-f638bf2c340f_story.html
Original article -
September 27, 2019 at 4:43 p.m. EDT
U.S. District Judge Dolly M. Gee issued a permanent injunction against new regulations that would have dramatically expanded the federal government’s ability to detain migrant children with their parents.
Gee’s action came after hearing arguments from the Justice Department and advocates for immigrants in the long-running federal case in the Central District of California.
This is a developing story. It will be updated.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/national/wp/2019/09/27/federal-judge-blocks-trump-administration-from-detaining-migrant-children-for-indefinite-periods/
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