Migrant childrenU.S. to Allow Indefinite Detention of Migrant Children

The Department of Homeland Security said it intends to void a rule which prohibited the detention of migrant children for more than twenty days. The step is expected to be challenged in court.

The administration said on Wednesday that it would remove limits on how long migrant children can be detained. The move would allow for migrant families detained at the Mexican border to be held until their asylum case is processed, which can take up to several months.

USA Today reports that in order to allow for indefinite detention, DHS said it would terminate the 1997 Flores Settlement Agreement, a legal ruling that barred the government from holding migrant children in detention for more than twenty days.

The Flores rule was written in response to a lawsuit documenting abuse of migrants in detention. The rule requires that migrants receive adequate and humane care. It requires children be released within twenty days and placed in the custody of their parents or relatives.

Acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan said the ruling “has generally forced the government to release families into the country after just 20 days, incentivizing illegal entry.”

“Human smugglers advertise, and intending migrants know well, that even if they cross the border illegally, arriving at our border with a child has meant that they will be released into the United States to wait for court proceedings that could take five years or more,” McAleenan said.

The Trump administration argued that scrapping the Flores agreement was a humane approach to the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border. DHS officials say that about 390,000 family units have been caught at the border since last October.

“To protect these children from abuse, and stop this illegal flow, we must close these loopholes. This is an urgent humanitarian necessity,” Trump said in a statement.

The new policy will be implemented in the next sixty days, but it is expected to be challenged in court.

The rule change is the latest in a series of efforts by the administration to reduce both legal and illegal migration into the United States.

McAleenan said the new rule would set better standards of care for detained families, holding them in “fundamentally different” facilities that would include community living rooms, classrooms, libraries and football fields.

On 15 July the White House unveiled a rule which would practically bar all no-Mexican immigrants from applying for asylum at the southern border. These non-Mexican migrants will have the show that they had applied for asylum in a “safe haven” third country along their journey, and had been rejected.

Earlier this month the administration announced a new regulation which would make it much more difficult for migrants who had used public benefits such as food stamps to get a visas or Green Card.

On Wednesday, Trump said the administration would begin work to end the right of citizenship for U.S.-born children of noncitizens and people who immigrated to the United States illegally.

In October 2018 Trump told Axios that that he would end “birthright citizenship” through an executive order. Trump was unaware of the fact that birthright citizenship was the result of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which was passed after the Civil War to ensure that black Americans had full citizenship rights. The amendment granted citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States.”

It has since been interpreted to grant citizenship to most people born in the United States, whether or not their parents are American citizens or legally living in the United States.

Trump later said that his lawyers had told him he can change the amendment simply by an executive order. Practically all constitutional scholars say this approach would face huge, and likely insurmountable, legal challenges.

Migrant and human rights advocacy groups criticized the government’s plan and accused authorities of mistreating migrants.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) said the move showed that the Trump administration’s cruelty was boundless.

“Make no mistake: this new rule is about letting President Trump and Stephen Miller keep children in awful conditions for longer periods of time and continue the administration’s horrid treatment of innocent migrant families fleeing unthinkable hardship.”