I’ve always been a bibliophile, reading on average a couple of books a month. So when I started covering immigration for Reveal nearly two years ago, I set out to read as much as I could about the immigrant experience in the U.S.

I read “The Beast,” by a Salvadoran journalist who set out to chronicle the journey of migrants who risked their lives aboard a dangerous train. I also read “The Line Becomes a River,” a collection of dispatches from a former Border Patrol agent, and “We Built the Wall,” which explores the often impossible task of obtaining U.S. asylum.

A few weeks ago, I learned about a new book, “Baby Jails: The Fight to End the Incarceration of Refugee Children in America,” which unspools the complicated but significant history of the Flores agreement, a landmark court settlement that defines much of our reporting around migrant children and families.

The agreement, which has protected the rights of migrant children for two decades, is the reason we were able to uncover the improper drugging of migrant children at a Texas facility. It gives us access to court records detailing conditions inside the roughly 170 shelters for unaccompanied children across the country. The Trump administration has tried to end Flores, which likely would lead to the indefinite detention of children, though the courts so far have foiled that attempt. 

I spoke to the book’s author, Philip G. Schrag, a Georgetown University law professor. Since 1995, he has run a program that allows students to represent asylum seekers. Schrag also has written several books about asylum law.  

Here’s our conversation, edited lightly for clarity: 

What compelled you to start doing research and ultimately write a book about the Flores agreement?

Philip Schrag: In 2015, I volunteered at Dilley (a family detention center in Texas) for a few days, and I was just horrified by seeing all these very small children clinging to their mothers and desperate to get out of what was essentially a jail. So the experience stuck with me, and I decided to write a book about the history leading up to the creation of Dilley and Karnes (another Texas family detention center). I didn't know at that time that the Trump administration would turn the Flores settlement agreement into a household word and political punching ball. So it was very surprising to me in 2018, as I was starting to finish writing this book, that there were 50 pages still to write about all of the policies of the Trump administration that made the end of the book quite different from the beginning.

President Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” family separation policy and Remain In Mexico program are already part of his legacy. How do his policies compare to those from previous administrations, such as President Barack Obama?

Schrag: The Obama administration doesn't get very good marks for its treatment of child migrants. In 2014, when families started fleeing Central America to escape the violence there, the Obama administration's response was anything but humanitarian. It was to build a temporary prison for them in Artesia, New Mexico, and then create the large family jails in Philadelphia and Texas. And if the Flores settlement agreement had not stopped them, the administration would have kept the kids there indefinitely until months or years later, when their immigration cases were finally decided by immigration courts. The Obama administration fought against the Flores settlement agreement quite strenuously. It sought in the federal district court to reverse the agreement, claiming that it didn't apply to accompanied children. It lost that argument and appealed to the 9th Circuit and lost the argument again. At that point, the government did something interesting. The 9th Circuit said that the Flores agreement said that children couldn't be kept in jails for more than 20 days but that it had no application to parents. That set the stage for possible family separation. And the Obama administration seriously thought about whether to engage in family separation by keeping the mothers in jail and keep sending their children to the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement. But it decided, to its credit, that it would not do that. The Trump administration had no such compunctions. 

Beyond reversing Trump immigration policies, what are some other solutions or alternatives to child and family detention that you think Congress should consider?

Schrag: It could (provide funding to) appoint many more immigration judges to clear away the backlog of a million cases. And there has to be some kind of processing at the border to take account of who people are and whether they are seeking refuge from persecution or not. But the processing could be much more humane than it is now. There's no need to put people in cages. We could build much more humane receiving facilities at the border, decent dormitories and the like. And then after people pass through the initial screening, there's no need to put children in jail. And we should be restoring the system that Trump dismantled for these families of having case managers. This is a very successful system that was instituted at the end of the Obama administration in which people who were released were given essentially social workers who would make sure that they knew how to go to court, where the court was, made sure they showed up to all their appointments and helped the families to get on their feet. It was very successful. More than 96% of people showed up for all their hearings. And the Trump administration, perhaps fearing that it was too successful, discontinued this.

Beyond the Flores litigation, what are some of the most important issues affecting migrant children and families that we should be watching in 2020?

Schrag: I think the most important one is the rule recently enacted by the Trump administration that denies asylum to anyone, including children and unaccompanied children, who cross the border without first applying for asylum someplace else. That decision was enjoined by a federal district court. The injunction went to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit and then was stayed by the Supreme Court with two dissents. It's now back in the 9th Circuit. And we're awaiting a decision on that issue. But it'll go to the Supreme Court no matter who wins. So the most important thing for the next couple of years affecting all of these families is whether the Supreme Court upholds or overthrows that regulation.

Read our stories about the Flores agreement here.
 

PALANTIR’S CEO ADMITS TO HELPING ICE DEPORT UNDOCUMENTED PARENTS

In a CNBC interview last week, Palantir Technologies CEO Alex Karp acknowledged that the data analytics firm supplied U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement with the technology to track down undocumented parents.

“We started this contract under Obama, and obviously, there’s a lot of legitimate concern about what happens on our border, how it happens and what does the enforcement look like?” Karp told CNBC. “It’s a legitimate, complex issue. My personal position is we acknowledge the complexity. The people protesting, whom I respect, should also acknowledge that complexity.”   

In May, The Intercept reported that ICE used Palantir technology to track down sponsors – typically parents or family members – of unaccompanied children. We told you the story about one of these families in March. Wilson, a Guatemalan father living in Philadelphia, was arrested by immigration agents in 2017 after he took in his daughter when she arrived alone at the U.S. border.

At the time, ICE was conducting an operation that targeted undocumented parents suspected of hiring smugglers to bring their children to the U.S. But our reporting cast doubt on that narrative. A search of more than 1,400 smuggling-related cases filed in federal court in the seven months during and after the operation turned up only one case that clearly was connected to the program.

Karp’s interview is the latest revelation into the government’s secretive use of data to target undocumented immigrants. Last year, The New York Times Magazine uncovered that ICE used recorded calls from detention facilities and driver’s license information from state DMV databases to locate and arrest immigrants.

Watch the CNBC interview here.

ANOTHER CITY BLOCKS VISIONQUEST FROM OPENING SHELTER FOR CHILDREN

Waco, Texas, officials unanimously voted this week against private firm VisionQuest’s proposal to open a facility for unaccompanied migrant children in their city, the Waco Tribune-Herald reported.

Waco is now among at least six cities or states that have blocked VisionQuest’s efforts to open shelters in their communities. Last week, the Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously to temporarily ban immigrant detention centers and shelters for unaccompanied children within the city.

The Los Angeles decision comes two months after my colleagues Aura Bogado and Patrick Michels broke the story about VisionQuest’s plan to open a shelter there. Throughout the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, scandals plagued the company, which repeatedly was investigated for violent handling of children.

Read our VisionQuest reporting here.
 

3 THINGS WE’RE READING

1. From frequent rule changes to missing interpreters, chaos reigns in a strained immigration court system that now handles nearly 1 million cases. (Associated Press)

During a 10-day period last year, reporters visited immigration courts in 11 cities – from Los Angeles to Lumpkin, Georgia – and learned “how crushing caseloads and shifting policies have landed the courts in unprecedented turmoil.” They observed judges setting court dates years in advance, young children sitting on the floor of cramped courtrooms and misplaced case files. 

The kicker: In a locked, guarded courtroom in a compound surrounded by razor wire, Immigration Judge Jerome Rothschild waits – and stalls. A Spanish interpreter is running late because of a flat tire. Rothschild tells the five immigrants before him that he’ll take a break before the proceedings even start. His hope: to delay just long enough so these immigrants won’t have to sit by, uncomprehendingly, as their futures are decided. “We are, untypically, without an interpreter,” Rothschild tells a lawyer who enters the courtroom at the Stewart Detention Center after driving down from Atlanta, about 140 miles away.

2. Dozens of immigration judges have left their positions as a result of Trump’s quota system and stringent immigration policies. (Los Angeles Times)

Concerned about the immigration court’s lack of independence from the Department of Justice and a demanding quota system requiring judges to speed through cases, many immigration judges across the country have resigned or retired from their posts. Among them is Judge Charles Honeyman, who retired earlier this month after 24 years on the bench, most recently in Philadelphia. 

“All of these factors and forces I regret tipped the balance for me,” he said. “It was time for Courtroom 1 at the Philadelphia immigration court to go dark.”

The kicker: “There are many of us who just feel we can’t be part of a system that’s just so fundamentally unfair,” said Ilyce Shugall, who quit her job as an immigration judge in San Francisco last March and now directs the Immigrant Legal Defense Program at the Justice & Diversity Center of the Bar Association of San Francisco. “I took an oath to uphold the Constitution.” The Trump administration was “using the court as a weapon against immigrants,” she said.

3. A 7-year-old girl from Guatemala who spent 210 days in detention with her father was released without him. (The Philadelphia Inquirer) 

Maddie and her father, identified in court records as Mr. H, came to the U.S. to escape violence in their native Guatemala. Immigration officials transferred them to the Berks County residential center in Pennsylvania, one of three family detention centers in the country. Maddie recently was released to her mother in New Jersey, but a judge denied her father’s request to be released as well. Their lawyers told the Inquirer that “never in hundreds of cases has a child been freed from Berks without the accompanying parent.”

The kicker: Federal immigration authorities had offered to immediately release Maddie to her mother in New Jersey. But not freeing her father, the family’s lawyers argued, made the overture merely a different form of family separation, one they said would inflict more harm on a suffering child. 

Your tips have been vital to our immigration coverage. Keep them coming: [email protected]. 

– Laura C. Morel

Fact-based journalism is worth fighting for.