Judge rejects Trump administration's effort to end a court settlement protecting immigrant children

A federal judge in Los Angeles denied a motion from the Trump administration Friday to throw out a decades-old settlement that outlines protections for immigrant children in federal detention.

In her ruling, U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee said the federal government had not shown that Homeland Security regulations satisfy the agreement's requirements, including that minors be released quickly and that family detention centers be properly licensed. 

She also said the government failed to "identify any new facts or law" since she rejected an effort to end the agreement in 2019.

The White House did not immediately respond to LAist's request for comment.

Gee heard arguments from the federal government and immigrant advocates in a hearing last week. Lawyers representing immigrant children said minors were being held in U.S. Customs and Border Protection facilities for extended periods of time and asked the judge to appoint an independent monitor.

The hearing centered on the Flores Settlement Agreement, a 1997 consent decree that outlines minimum standards for conditions for children in immigration custody. It broadly requires the government to quickly move minors out of immigration detention and into facilities licensed to care for children.

Last year, Gee ended part of that agreement for the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees care for unaccompanied immigrant children in the U.S., with some exceptions. But the requirements of Flores are still in place for Homeland Security facilities like Border Patrol.

It's those requirements that the government was seeking to end, arguing that the executive branch needed more flexibility and citing recent legislation like the "Big Beautiful Bill," which includes billions of dollars for new detention facilities including for families.

"We're raising this early in an administration that ran on immigration issues," Justice Department attorney Tiberius Davis told the judge last week.

Multiple immigrant rights groups represented the Flores plaintiffs in court. Sergio Perez, executive director for the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, told LAist the government's attempt was ridiculous.

" It's an absurd and political move that reflects this administration's seemingly insatiable disdain for the checks and balances," he said.

The judge also heard a second motion from immigrant advocacy organizations alleging that the government is violating the Flores agreement by keeping children in "prison-like" conditions for extended periods of time.

" Nobody's supposed to be held in Border Patrol facilities for more than 72 hours," Diane de Gramont is an attorney with National Center for Youth Law told LAist. "But kids had been held for over a week, even two weeks, three weeks. And there have been children held for over a month in a holding cell with no access to daylight or recreation, and infrequent access to even showers."

The judge has not yet ruled on that motion, but she expressed concern about holding times at Border Patrol facilities at last week's hearing.

The origins of the Flores agreement protections are in Los Angeles in the 1980s. Lawyers brought the federal government to court over the treatment of a 15 year-old girl from El Salvador in federal custody in a Pasadena hotel. That eventually led the government to agree to the national standards for the treatment of children in immigration detention that still stand today.

The immigration lawyer that brought that lawsuit, Carlos Holguín, is still on the case.