The Trump Admin is trying nullify a Government agreement to NOT hold immigrant children longer a certain period in places that meet certain health and other standards….
Lawyers are in the process in the courts of keeping the agreement in force…
So far?
Federal judges have refused the Trump admin efforts to worm out of the agreement…
On Friday, lawyers filed a motion to stop the government from implementing regulations that they say would endanger immigrant children. But the Trump administration could still enact the new rules as early as Wednesday, which lawyers claim would violate a decades-old agreement known as the Flores Settlement that protects children’s rights.
Legal experts involved in the case told HuffPost that the new regulations, proposed by the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Health and Human Services, would allow children to be detained indefinitely in unlicensed family detention centers.
“It would be disastrous,” said Holly Cooper, co-director of the immigration law clinic at the University of California, Davis, and one of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs in the Flores case. “We’ll see the indefinite detention of children in prison-like conditions.”
In an email to HuffPost, an HHS representative said that “as a matter of policy, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services does not comment on matters related to ongoing litigation.”
The Trump administration wants new rules to replace the Flores Settlement, which requires the government to hold children in facilities that meet certain health and services standards for the least amount of time possible.
The government said its new regulations, first released in September, would approximate the settlement by ensuring all migrant children are “treated with dignity, respect and special concern for their particular vulnerability as minors.”
But advocates say the regulations trample on children’s rights and completely contradict the 1997 agreement, which was named after a 15-year-old from El Salvador who was detained for two months despite having an aunt in the U.S…..