Trump Administration Seeks to End Protections for Child Immigrants
The Trump administration is moving to dismantle a significant immigration policy that mandates basic rights and protections for child immigrants held in custody.
This protection stems from a 1997 legal agreement known as the Flores Settlement Agreement, which limits how long the government can detain children. It also requires that children in custody receive necessities like adequate food, water, and clean clothing.
A push to terminate the Flores Agreement has been anticipated for some time. In a recent court filing, the Justice Department stated that the agreement should be “fully” terminated, suggesting it promotes fraudulent border crossings and hampers the federal government’s ability to detain and remove families effectively.
It’s worth noting that during his first term, Donald Trump made similar attempts to abolish these protections.
The latest actions come on the heels of various measures taken by the Trump administration against child immigrants, including resuming practices that involve detaining families together. Immigration advocacy groups are actively challenging these actions. Earlier this month, there was a report indicating a decline in unaccompanied children at government facilities. Meanwhile, lawmakers are striving to limit unaccompanied children’s access to legal services, complicating the situation for families in detention.
Mishan Waugh, a senior lawyer at the National Center for Youth Law, expressed her concern, stating, “It’s cruel to remove these basic protections for children.” She noted that infants and toddlers are currently being held in family detention, with many kids separated from their families unnecessarily.
Faisal Al Jubri, representing a Texas-based legal nonprofit, criticized the efforts to suspend the Flores Agreement, claiming such moves disregard both the rule of law and the rights of innocent children. He emphasized that the administration seems intent on benefiting private prison contractors managing immigration detention facilities rather than safeguarding humanitarian protections for vulnerable children.
In 2019, the Trump administration sought to have the Flores settlement agreement dissolved, but that motion did not succeed. Under the Biden administration, federal judges permitted some easing of oversight requirements, yet contracts between U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and immigration enforcement agencies remain intact.
Sergio Perez, executive director of the Center for Human Rights Constitution, highlighted that “children seeking refuge in our country should be welcomed, not subjected to imprisonment and deprivation.”
The Flores Settlement Agreement is named after Jenny Flores, a young girl who fled civil strife in El Salvador and became part of a class action lawsuit that exposed systemic abuse of children in custody during the 1980s.
Since the agreement’s establishment in 1997, various lawsuits have surfaced aimed at ending the abuse of immigrant children. In 2018, lawyers filed a lawsuit after discovering that unaccompanied minors had been administered psychotropic medication without their consent.
In a significant court ruling in 2024, the court determined that CBP violated the terms of the Flores Agreement by detaining children and families in field locations along the southern U.S. border without sufficient access to hygiene, medical care, food, water, or blankets. Reports indicated that in extreme conditions, children were forced to use portable toilets due to harsh temperatures.
