Eric Gay/Associated Press

For the past 20 years, the Flores agreement ([link removed]) has protected migrant children in U.S. custody from things like body cavity searches ([link removed]) and overcrowded rooms with no access to doctors or schooling.

The agreement, forged in 1997, was the result of a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of immigrant children that crossed the border alone in the 1980s. It forced the government to comply with a set of standards meant to protect children in U.S. custody.

The settlement was always meant to be temporary until the government created its own rules, but no administration had done so. However, last week, the Trump administration announced new regulations that would replace the Flores agreement.

Child advocates and lawyers have raised concerns that the government’s plan does away with key safeguards for the children, and could lead to their indefinite detention. ([link removed])

Here are some of the Flores protections that aren’t included in the new rules: ([link removed])
* Legal access: Attorneys that monitor Flores protections currently have access to shelters where children are held. But the new rules don’t include this provision. “Those attorneys are the ones that help hold the government accountable for abuse and deteriorating conditions when those exist. Access to those facilities is gone in the new rules,” our Aura Bogado points out on Twitter. ([link removed])
* State oversight: Children currently must be placed in shelters that are licensed by the state, ensuring an added layer of oversight over the government’s treatment of the children. The new rules will eliminate this requirement and replace it with an “alternative” that is approved by a third-party auditor.
* The right to see a judge: Children would also lose the right to see a judge if they’re considered a flight risk and placed in a secure facility. Under the new rules, they would appear before an “independent hearing officer” that works for the Department of Health and Human Services, the same government department that has custody of the children. “Hardly a neutral and detached decisionmaker,” Flores lawyers have said in previous court filings.

The rules will take effect on Oct. 22, but have already been challenged in court ([link removed]) by 19 states and the District of Columbia. Lawyers that safeguard the Flores protections have also filed objections that will be reviewed by Judge Dolly Gee.

I spoke with WNYC Studios’ “The Takeaway” last week about the history of the Flores agreement and its significance in the lives of migrant children in the last 20 years. Listen here. ([link removed])

Read the rules here. ([link removed])

TROUBLED FACILITY WON’T GET ITS LICENSE BACK, JUDGE RULES

Last month, we partnered with WRAL News on an investigation ([link removed]) into the government’s plan to send migrant children to shelter providers with little experience and troubling track records.

Among the facilities is New Horizon Group Home in North Carolina. Our colleagues at WRAL learned that one of New Horizon Group Home’s locations was shut down ([link removed]) by North Carolina officials last year after inspectors found conditions ([link removed]) inside that presented “an imminent danger” to the children. New Horizon challenged the state’s decision in court.

Last week, a judge upheld the state’s decision. "This facility was wholly ill-prepared to accept these clients,” the ruling reads.

Meanwhile, New Horizon applied for a new state license after the federal government awarded it $4 million to open a shelter for unaccompanied youth. State officials recently denied that application.

Read the latest WRAL story here. ([link removed])

INSPECTOR GENERAL: SOUTHWEST KEY VIOLATED SAFETY REQUIREMENTS

Southwest Key, one of the largest shelter providers for migrant children in the U.S., failed to properly vet some potential sponsors for children, according to a new Office of Inspector General report.

In their report, released earlier this month, inspectors noted that Southwest Key didn’t “properly document the care or release” of 38 percent of children in its care in 2016. That includes failing to run background checks on adult family members that have agreed to care for the children after their release.

“Southwest Key was potentially releasing children to sponsors who had not been properly vetted or to households in which an adult household member had not been properly vetted, and as a result, the children’s health and safety could have been at risk,” the report states.

Officials also found that some employee and volunteer files lacked required background checks.

In a second report that was also released this month, inspectors found that Southwest Key didn’t take required precautions to protect personal information of children in its care, like running risk assessments on its computer system. Without these assessments, “Southwest Key management can only react to situations such as ransomware and cyberattacks rather than being proactive,” the report reads.

Find the reports here ([link removed]) and here. ([link removed])

WHAT WE’RE READING

The U.S. government wants to send migrant children to a for-profit firm with a controversial past. (Daily Beast ([link removed]) )

Migrant children may soon be housed at a for-profit facility in Philadelphia managed by the same company that ran a juvenile-detention center there until state authorities shut it down amid allegations of physical abuse two years ago.

The City of Brotherly Love is also a sanctuary city and it is staging a legal fight to block a federally funded $5 million plan by VisionQuest to hold 60 migrant children aged 13 to 17 at a facility called the Grace Dix Center. A judge found in favor of VisionQuest, but the city has appealed.

Popular opposition to the plan in Philadelphia was stoked when the Philadelphia Inquirer reported the company’s founder, Robert Burton, overheard two counselors-in-training chatting with each other and told them “Don’t speak Spanish.”

That was just the latest in a long series of troubling incidents at VisionQuest, stretching all the way back to 1979, when Burton was quoted as saying the use of the N-word is “not necessarily improper.”

Some federal agencies sent its employees, including immigration judges, links to white nationalist or conspiracy websites. (BuzzFeed News ([link removed]) )

An arm of the Justice Department regularly sent summaries and links to articles from an online white nationalist publication over the last year, a BuzzFeed News investigation has found. In addition, similar newsletters sent to the Labor Department, ICE, HUD, and the Department of Homeland Security included links and content from hyperpartisan and conspiracy-oriented publishers.

In daily bulletins about media coverage for the department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, which runs the nation’s immigration courts, a government contractor sometimes included links to VDare, an anti-Semitic and racist site whose editor has claimed that American culture is under threat from nonwhite peoples. That contractor, a Dade City, Florida–based company called TechMIS, also compiles newsletters for other agencies, including the Department of Labor, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Office of Housing and Urban Development.

While these newsletters typically shared articles from local and mainstream national news outlets — including BuzzFeed News — they also regularly delivered content from partisan publications touting anti-immigration rhetoric and conspiracy theories. Among these publications: the Western Journal, a hyperpartisan publisher whose founder once questioned if then-presidential candidate Barack Obama was Muslim, and the Epoch Times, a newspaper associated with the Chinese Falun Gong movement and whose related media properties have backed QAnon, a conspiracy theory claiming a group of high-ranking officials known as the “Deep State” is subverting President Donald Trump’s goals.

Undocumented victims that survived the El Paso shooting could qualify for a special visa that grants temporary status. (El Paso Times ([link removed]) )

The U visa allows victims to live and work legally in the U.S. for four years, then opens the door for petitioners to apply for a green card.

El Paso immigration attorneys and law enforcement say some undocumented survivors of the Aug. 3 Walmart massacre could also qualify, giving them crucial protection as local and federal prosecutors pursue capital murder charges against the suspect accused of fatally shooting 22 people and wounding 25 others in a racist rampage.

“The U visa was created for people like them who are living in the shadows,” said Linda Corchado, an El Paso immigration attorney with nonprofit law office Las Americas.

“It’s meant to encourage them to come out of the shadows and provide any sort of information that could be useful to law enforcement about the crime that just happened. Their voice matters, and they should feel like their voice matters.”

But attorneys caution that the U visa also comes with conditions and some risk, both in the time it can take to secure the visa and in the potential exposure to the nation's deportation machine.

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

– Laura C. Morel
Fact-based journalism is worth fighting for.
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