Judge Rejects Trump’s Attempt to End Standards of Care for Detained Migrant Children; The New York Times, August 15, 2025

Miriam Jordan, The New York Times; Judge Rejects Trump’s Attempt to End Standards of Care for Detained Migrant Children

[Kip Currier: Take a moment to reflect on the utter amorality of individuals and an administration that would continue to strive to be liberated from providing "basic standards of care and oversight for children in U.S. immigration custody".

Yet this same Trump 2.0 administration has cratered funding for world healthcare and life-saving vaccines through USAID, allocated an estimated one billion dollars to retrofit a Qatari "gift" jet as the new Air Force One, eliminated basic healthcare for millions of Americans, and approved more tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. The unethical depravity of such actions and indifference to offering minimal levels of humane care for children in need is shameful.]

[Excerpt]

"A federal judge rejected on Friday the Trump administration’s second attempt to end a decades-old legal agreement that mandates basic standards of care and oversight for children in U.S. immigration custody.

Judge Dolly M. Gee of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California ruled that the Flores Settlement Agreement, in effect since 1997, must remain in place. Court-appointed monitors and lawyers will continue to have access to migrant children in border stations and family detention centers to ensure that the government is complying with the agreement.

The first Trump administration tried and failed in 2019 to dissolve the settlement agreement. And in a 20-page ruling, Judge Gee criticized the government for trying again, even though, she wrote, “they point to no meaningful change either in factual conditions or in law since their last motion to terminate.”

Under the 1997 consent decree, migrants who are 17 years old and younger must be held in the “least restrictive” setting while efforts are made to expeditiously release them. The minors must receive adequate meals, clean water, clothing, education and medical assistance, among other basic needs."