Judge Rejects Trump’s Attempt to End Standards of Care for Detained Migrant Children

A federal judge rejected on Friday the Trump administration’s second attempt to end a decades-old legal agreement that mandates basic standards of care and oversight for children in U.S. immigration custody.

Judge Dolly M. Gee of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California ruled that the Flores Settlement Agreement, in effect since 1997, must remain in place. Court-appointed monitors and lawyers will continue to have access to migrant children in border stations and family detention centers to ensure that the government is complying with the agreement.

The first Trump administration tried and failed in 2019 to dissolve the settlement agreement. And in a 20-page ruling, Judge Gee criticized the government for trying again, even though, she wrote, “they point to no meaningful change either in factual conditions or in law since their last motion to terminate.”

Under the 1997 consent decree, migrants who are 17 years old and younger must be held in the “least restrictive” setting while efforts are made to expeditiously release them. The minors must receive adequate meals, clean water, clothing, education and medical assistance, among other basic needs.

The judge said that neither the Homeland Security Department nor the Department of Health and Human Services, which are responsible for migrant children, were in “sufficiently substantial compliance to warrant termination of the Flores Settlement Agreement.”

The Homeland Security Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But the Trump administration is expected to appeal the ruling again, setting the stage for the case to reach the U.S. Supreme Court.