A federal judge ordered Customs and Border Protection to immediately address conditions in its migrant detention facilities and swiftly come up with a plan to abide by a 1997 settlement that set standards for the treatment of children in custody.
District Court Judge Dolly Gee ruled Friday amid dueling claims about the conditions at its El Paso and Rio Grande Valley centers made by lawyers advocating on behalf of the migrant minors and by the Justice Department.
Gee ordered an expedited mediation between the two parties in front of the independent monitor whom the court had appointed to ensure that the agency was complying with the Flores settlement agreement and gave the monitor power to immediately “set other deadlines and take other measures appropriate to facilitate the prompt remediation of the conditions at issue, including the retention of an independent public health expert.” The judge also said she wants a status report from the parties on mediation and what has been done to address the conditions by July 12.
The Flores settlement agreement said children in U.S. custody must be treated “with dignity and respect” and guaranteed access to food, water, medical assistance, and more, while also stipulating that any detention facilities where minors are held should be safe and sanitary.
Expressing her frustration with the government’s compliance efforts, Gee wrote: “If 22 years has not been sufficient time for Defendants to refine that plan in a manner consistent with their concern for the particular vulnerability of minors and their obligation to maintain facilities that are consistently safe and sanitary, it is imperative that they develop such a comprehensive plan forthwith.”
The court previously found that Customs and Border Patrol had committed multiple breaches of the Flores Agreement in recent years, including in a 2015 court order that discussed “widespread and deplorable conditions in holding cells of CPB stations” and a June 2017 court order which asserted that “CBP facilities in the Rio Grande Valley and El Paso Sectors are not sanitary.”
Gee noted that the plaintiffs were “claiming that CBP has continued to commit many of the same violations years later.”
“While the Court is aware that the sudden influx of migrants presents special challenges and that the facilities’ conditions are not static, the Flores Agreement contemplated such circumstances and charged Defendants with the task of preparing a ‘written plan that describes the reasonable efforts that it will take to place all minors as expeditiously as possible’,” Gee wrote.
The judge also warned the plaintiff’s attorneys against making “veiled ad hominem attacks” against the court-appointed monitor, saying that the monitor has “actively and effectively” worked “to establish and facilitate an expeditious process for the resolution of myriad disputes that have arisen.”
The plaintiff’s attorneys had asked the judge last Wednesday for an order that would allow for an immediate inspection of CBP facilities by a public health expert, immediate access to the facilities by independent medical professionals, the deployment of case management teams to assess the medical needs of migrant children, and a finding that the U.S. government was in contempt of court.
Lawyers for the government countered on Thursday that the plaintiffs weren’t just trying to enforce the Flores agreement but were instead calling for coercive actions that would go beyond the scope of the agreement, and they requested a mediation process in front of the court-appointed monitor to get to the bottom of this.
The judge said on Friday that the court has already issued several orders that have set forth in detail what it considers to be violations of the Flores Agreement and thus the parties need not use divining tools to extrapolate from those orders what does or does not constitute noncompliance. The judge said that the poor conditions alleged by the plaintiffs could threaten the safety and welfare of the children being detained and that the allegations demand immediate action.
The judge’s ruling on Friday came after the passage of a $4.6 billion bipartisan bill by the House and Senate on Thursday for humanitarian aid to help ease the crisis on the southern border, with large sums directed at improving conditions at the agency’s detention facilities.
