State attorneys general sue to block Trump's push to override child migrant detention rules

Child migrants detained in U.S. facilities in 2018

(Image credit: Getty Images)

Attorneys general from 19 states and the District of Columbia, led by California and Massachusetts, filed suit Monday to block Trump administration efforts to alter a 1997 federal consent decree called the Flores settlement that lays out ground rules for how the federal government detains migrant children. The new rules, announced on Friday, would lift court oversight and allow children to be held indefinitely; under Flores, minors can be detained for no longer than 20 days and in the least restrictive setting.

The 20 attorneys general, all Democrats, argue in their lawsuit that the Trump rules violate the spirit of the Flores settlement, that their states would bear the cost of the trauma and irreparable damage inflicted on the tens of thousands of minors detained for long periods of times, and that the rule undermines state licensing programs for child care facilities. State officials also made the moral case that locking up children is wrong and pointless. U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee must sign off on the Trump administration's rules, set to take effect in 60 days.

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The Trump administration said that under its rules, the child and family detention facilities will be audited and the audits made public, but the Flores lawyers would no longer have access to the children and the facilities where they are held, sometimes in deplorable conditions. It is thanks to these Flores monitors that we get jolted into remembering that the U.S. is locking up children, Barbara Bradley Hagerty notes at The Atlantic, and learn they "don't have soap. They are freezing. The food is rotten." If Trump's long-sought rules go into effect, she adds, "the long-term detention of migrant children would carry on out of view from advocates, the American public at large, and the entire world."

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The plaintiffs' lawyers overseeing the agreement have also said they will also challenge the rules.

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.