Today’s Action: Stop Trump from detaining migrant children indefinitely

The Flores settlement is a 1997 court ruling that blocked children from being detained beyond a reasonable amount of days (later defined as 20 days). So when Trump’s Zero Tolerance policy launched the mass lock-up of migrant families, Trump skirted the protections of the Flores settlement by ripping children from their families en masse, keeping parents in federal prisons while ‘freeing’ their children to Health and Human Services’ facilities.

Now, Trump has decided to terminate the Flores settlement altogether, allowing him greater ease in furthering inhumane lock-ups, and obliterating the only protection these children, some as young as infants and toddlers, have against indefinite detention by the U.S. government..

Call or email your Members of Congress – or visit them in-person during the final days of recess – and demand they do everything in their power to block the termination of the Flores agreement.

The purpose of this morally-vacant detention policy is to ensure migrants show up for their court hearings. Alternatively, the Family Case Management Program, which monitored migrants and provided health and legal services while allowing them to go free (no detention), had a 99% compliance rate in addition to being cost-effective and (not that it matters to this regime) humane.

But Trump ended that program in 2017 in favor of more detention centers — utterly inhumane concentration camps that cost $800 per person per night. Why? Because his base likes to see brown bodies behind bars.

As we continue to battle Trump’s policies against all immigrants, we must put special focus on protecting the most vulnerable – the children – by blocking him from eliminating their current best advocate: Flores.

Email or call (202.224.3121) your Members of Congress and demand they make every effort to protect migrant children by keeping the terms of the Flores settlement intact.