A group of immigration attorneys filed a lawsuit late Friday, June 20, aimed at blocking the Trump administration from ending a program that protects immigrant children while they’re held in federal custody. The lawsuit is peppered with testimony from both adults and children who describe the conditions at two detention facilities in Texas.
The lawsuit reflects interviews with detainees and site visits to two family detention centers in Dilley and Karnes, Texas, conducted by immigration advocates from the National Center for Youth Law, the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, RAICES and Children’s Rights.
A battle over the Flores Settlement Agreement
In May, various federal agencies, including the Department of Justice (DOJ), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), asked a federal court in Los Angeles to end the Flores Settlement Agreement (FSA). Since the 1990s, that settlement has regulated conditions for immigrant children in federal detention through oversight and visits. It also imposed limits on the duration of a child’s detention.
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While immigration advocates worry that ending the settlement will worsen conditions in detention facilities, Trump administration officials suggest it has long been a “tool” for those who want to exploit America’s immigration policies.
“For years, the Flores consent decree has been a tool of the Left to promote an open borders agenda,” a senior DHS official told the Washington Examiner back in May. “It is long overdue for a single district in California to stop managing the Executive Branch’s immigration functions. The Trump administration is committed to restoring common sense to our immigration system.”
Mishan Wroe, a senior immigration attorney at the National Center for Youth Law, tied the FSA to immigration provisions in President Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Tax Bill,” writing in a statement, “At a time when Congress is considering funding the indefinite detention of children and families, defending the Flores Settlement is more urgent than ever.”
Trump’s tax bill, which is currently held up in the Senate, includes $45 billion in funding over the next four years to bolster migrant adult and family detentions, marking a threefold spending increase.
However, according to Politico, divisions have emerged within the GOP regarding the price tag of the bill’s immigration provisions, including from Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who has significant influence over border spending as head of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs panel.
In their lawsuit Friday, the group of immigration lawyers argues that if the Flores Settlement Agreement were to be eliminated, the organizations that conduct visits and oversight of detention facilities would no longer be able to, thus reducing the amount of documentary evidence of what happens inside.
However, the administration’s court filing last month points to new laws and policies, such as federalized standards for migrant child care, as reasons why the FSA is no longer necessary. Trump’s DOJ also says the original intent of the FSA, which was meant to cover unaccompanied migrant children, has since been expanded to protect migrant families with minors –– something human smugglers have sought to take advantage of.
While the Trump administration does not dispute that it would detain children indefinitely, it does argue that eliminating the FSA would enable it to keep families together in situations necessitating long-term detention.
Lawsuit alleges medical neglect, inadequate water
The lawsuit filed Friday details a number of concerns inside the facilities in Dilley and Karnes, which are owned by private detention corporations CoreCivic and Geo Group, respectively.
For instance, RAICES interviewed 90 families, 40 of which reported some form of medical neglect, including a young boy with cancer who missed a doctor’s appointment after he and his family were detained following an immigration court hearing. Similarly, a 9-month-old baby has reportedly lost more than 8 pounds over the past month in detention, while a 12-year-old boy is largely unable to walk after a blood condition swelled his feet, and he was denied follow-up medical tests.
The availability of clean water was also a recurring theme.
According to court documents cited by The Associated Press, a mother’s 9-month-old baby had diarrhea for three days after she was forced to use tap water for her formula. Additionally, a 16-year-old girl told immigration attorneys that an adult pushed her little sister out of the way due to water scarcity.
“We don’t get enough water,” the girl –– who’s currently being held with her mother and two younger siblings at the Karnes County Immigration Processing Center –– said in a declaration. “They put out a little case of water, and everyone has to run for it.”
Some of these problems are not new. In 2019, a mother filed a lawsuit against CoreCivic after her 18-month-old daughter died following three weeks in the private prison group’s Dilley facility.
The Associated Press sent emails to Attorney General Pam Bondi, CoreCivic and Geo Group, seeking comment. By midday Saturday, June 21, neither Bondi’s office nor Geo Group had responded, while CoreCivic directed questions to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Other detention facilities hit with similar reports
The alleged conditions resemble those recently detailed in a letter the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sent to immigration officials, regarding a facility in Kansas. The Federal Bureau of Prisons and ICE did not respond to the allegations in the ACLU’s letter.
A proposed class-action lawsuit in Baltimore also accuses ICE of detaining migrants in inhumane conditions.
According to Leecia Welch, deputy legal director at Children’s Rights, as the Trump administration ramps up its deportation efforts, conditions in facilities across the country will continue to deteriorate.
“As of early June, the census at Dilley was around 300 and only two of its five areas were open,” Welch said. “With a capacity of around 2,400 – it’s hard to imagine what it would be like with 2,000 more people.”
According to the National Immigrant Justice Center, there are currently more than 200 facilities across the U.S. that are being used to detain migrants. Those facilities will have to keep pace with White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller’s plan to increase ICE arrests from roughly 650 per day to at least 3,000.
However, in March, an official with the Department of Homeland Security reported that detention facilities across the country had reached capacity.
The Department of Homeland Security, under Secretary Kristi Noem, recently limited congressional oversight of detention facilities. Among other things, the new guidance requires lawmakers to give advanced notice of their intent to visit a facility.