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Challenge New Regulation Permitting Indefinite Detention of Immigrant Children
Posted on Aug 29 2019
August 28, 2019 – Minnesota, along with 19 other states and the district of Columbia, is suing the Trump administration to end its most recent attack on immigrant children and families. The challenged regulation will permit indefinite detention of children and decrease the minimum standards of care. Ignoring the need for protection and oversight, the regulation provides for “self-licensing” of child detention facilities by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Right now, long-term centers holding migrant children ordinarily are required to abide by state licensing standards. The new rule would take away state licensing authority, and instead give that authority to the very agencies that have brutally mistreated children and adults in immigrant detention centers. Six children have died in U.S. immigration custody or shortly after release since September 2018. Prior to September 2018, no children had died in U.S. immigration custody for a decade. The new rule was published shortly after U.S. Customs, and Border Protection (CBP) announced it would not be providing flu vaccines to people in detention, despite three youth deaths having occurred because of the flu. This denial of healthcare is yet another indication of the inhumane and senseless definition of “safe and sanitary” DHS applies to detention facilities.
“The Flores settlement establishes rules for protecting migrant children by limiting their time in custody and requiring humane treatment,” said Lenore Millibergity the interim executive director of the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota (ILCM). “This move violates the letter and the spirit of those protections and ignores the basic human rights of the children and adults detained. DHS argued in court that “safe and sanitary” conditions do not necessarily include beds, soap, or a toothbrush. Now they claim the authority to self-regulate and self-license child detention facilities. That is just wrong. Children do not belong behind bars. Children deserve homes, not cages.
“We need to support vulnerable children and adults, not legalize the practice of denying them beds to sleep in or soap and a toothbrush. We need alternatives to detention and better case management. When families seeking asylum are placed into Case Management programs run by community refugee and migrant groups and have attorneys, 99 percent comply with court appointments and follow through on their asylum application process. The administration should focus on helping families, not on caging children.
“Thank you to Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison for joining in the national challenge to the anti-Flores regulation.”
The new regulation, scheduled to take effect in 60 days, would end the protection given to children under the Flores settlement, which limits detention to 20 days, orders humane care, and maintains speedy and consistent review of issues with child detention by a federal court. That federal court could reject the regulation, keeping the Flores settlement in place while the administration appeals.