Shutterstock
Trump Admin wants to remove child migrant custody limits and has announced a new regulation that will replace a decades-old court agreement that previously set a limit on how long the government was allowed to hold migrant children in custody and specified the level of care they must receive.
This new regulation means that migrant families who cross the southern border into the U.S. could be detained indefinitely.
This new regulation was announced by Kevin McAleenan, Acting Homeland Security Secretary. It is supposed to go into effect in 60 days.
Trump and his administration have been pressing the Department of Homeland Security for more than a year to replace the court agreement, which is known as the Flores settlement. According to the administration, they think it is crucial to halting immigration across the southwestern border. They argue that the time limit on detentions is driving a surge of Central Americans crossing the border this year.
The current agreement, the Flores settlement, limits holding migrant children in immigration jails to 20 days. The 20-day limit was put in place after a federal class-action lawsuit detailed physical and emotional harm done to immigrant children who were held for extended periods of time in the detention facilities.
Trump has repeatedly complained about this 20-day cap, calling it the “catch and release” of families from Central America into the United States.
The Trump administration has been separating children from their parents as a method of circumventing the Flores settlement.
With the new rule, the administration is free to send migrant families who are caught crossing the border to a detention center and hold them there for as long as it takes for their immigration cases to be decided.
According to officials, cases could be resolved within three months, but many could drag on much longer than that. This means that families with children will be left in custody indefinitely until they are finally granted asylum or deported.
The new rule was proposed last fall. It is now scheduled to be published this week in the Federal Register and takes effect 60 days after that. Administration officials are expecting it to face legal challenges, and those challenges will probably delay it.
