McALLEN: A federal judge on Friday will hear a Trump administration request to end a nearly three-decade-old policy on ensuring safe conditions for immigrant children held in federal custody.
US District Judge Dolly Gee in Los Angeles will hold a hearing to consider dissolving a policy that limits how long Customs and Border Protection can hold immigrant children and that requires them to be kept in safe and sanitary conditions. The policy also allows third-party inspections of CBP facilities that hold immigrant children to ensure compliance.
Advocates for immigrant children have asked the judge to keep the protections and oversight in place and have submitted firsthand accounts from immigrants in family detention who described adults fighting children for clean water, despondent toddlers and a child with swollen feet who was denied a medical exam.
In its motion, President Donald Trump’s administration said the government has made substantial changes since the Flores agreement was formalized in 1997. The government said it has created standards and policies governing the custody of immigrant children that conform to legislation and the agreement.
Conditions for immigrant children who enter the US without a parent “have substantially improved from those that precipitated this suit four decades ago,” the government wrote in its motion.
