Nothing in the courtroom last Friday morning suggested how high the stakes were.
Inside the modern federal courthouse building in downtown Los Angeles, U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee’s courtroom was airy and white, with a bright, overcast sky shining through the windows behind the judge’s bench. Three dozen people in the gallery, mostly lawyers and reporters, sat quietly or whispered until Gee took her seat and called on the attorney for the Justice Department, August Flentje.
Flentje took his place behind a podium, knowing already what was in store. Attorneys on both sides had already received copies of the judge’s tentative order which would block the Trump administration’s attempt to dismantle the Flores Settlement Agreement, which for 22 years has laid down protections for how immigrant children in government detention must be treated. But Flentje gamely repeated the government’s claim that the Flores settlement was out of date, and that the new rules represented a nuanced way to modernize the old agreement.
“I’m not sure how you as an officer of the court can come to this court and tell me that the rules are consistent with the Flores agreement,” Gee told him. “Just because you tell me it’s night outside does not mean that it is not day.”
President Donald Trump has said that ending the Flores settlement is one of his top priorities. His White House has said the agreement is merely a “loophole” enticing human traffickers to bring children across the border.
“I recognize the position that you are in,” Gee told Flentje with a smile. “I am not denigrating your effort to carry the water.”
She asked if the Flores legal team cared to respond, and Carlos Holguín, one of the attorneys who has worked the case since it began in 1985, stood up. “I don’t think so,” he said, and waved his hands out toward the windows. “It’s day out.”
The settlement remains in place for now, as the government prepares its next move, possibly a direct appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
– Written by Patrick Michels
Check out his Twitter thread about the hearing, including comments from lawyers outside the courthouse, here.
DEVELOPMENTS WE’RE WATCHING
- A federal judge is considering further narrowing the government’s power to separate immigrant children from their parents. The ACLU submitted court filings earlier this year that say the Trump administration has separated more than 900 children from their parents, based on parents’ minor criminal records or unsubstantiated claims of gang membership. The case that ultimately ended the widespread family separation, known as “Ms. L” after an anonymous plaintiff, is ongoing. The judge, Dana Sabraw, called the government’s continued use of family separation a “thorny issue” and didn’t issue a ruling. The next hearing is scheduled for Oct. 18.
- A new Florida law that requires local law enforcement to hold undocumented immigrants in detention on behalf of Immigration and Customs Enforcement takes effect this week. Officials that don’t comply can be removed from office. “Now, there will be a whole segment of our community unwilling to report crimes,” South Miami Mayor Philip Stoddard told the Miami Herald.
- A migrant teen from Guatemala is suing the U.S. government for wrongfully placing him in adult detention for nearly a year based on a flawed dental scan. The boy made it to the U.S. border in October 2017 and was placed in a government shelter for children. A month later, based on an analysis of his teeth, the government decided he was an adult and he was placed in ICE custody. He remained there until September 2018, when the Guatemalan Consulate produced a birth certificate showing he was not yet 18 years old. Officials have improperly used dental X-rays in the past to determine an unaccompanied child’s age, our Aura Bogado reported last year.
3 THINGS WE’RE READING
1. At an Oval Office meeting earlier this year, President Trump suggested that troops at the border shoot asylum-seeking migrants in the legs. (New York Times)
Reporters spoke to more than a dozen administration officials about the around-the-clock internal panic the president set off at the White House as he raged about immigration in the spring.
The kicker: Privately, the president had often talked about fortifying a border wall with a water-filled trench, stocked with snakes or alligators, prompting aides to seek a cost estimate. He wanted the wall electrified, with spikes on top that could pierce human flesh. After publicly suggesting that soldiers shoot migrants if they threw rocks, the president backed off when his staff told him that was illegal. But later in a meeting, aides recalled, he suggested that they shoot migrants in the legs to slow them down. That’s not allowed either, they told him.
2. The government is denying women at an ICE detention center access to cancer treatment and mental health services. (HuffPost)
In interviews with the legal nonprofit RAICES, women held at the Karnes County Residential Center said they speak to psychologists over the phone instead of in person and have also not received medical treatment for complications after miscarriages.
The kicker: "We’ve heard so many women talk to us about wanting to kill themselves,” said Andrea Meza, the director of family detention services at RAICES. “It’s only a matter of time before someone dies at Karnes."
3. Immigration officials are using Google Translate to read through asylum-seekers’ social media posts. Language experts caution against the practice. (ProPublica)
Using automatic translation services is “not designed to parse nuance or recognize slang.” Yet an internal manual produced by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services provides step by step instructions on how officials can use Google Translate.
The kicker: “It’s naive on the part of government officials to do that,” said Douglas Hofstadter, a professor of cognitive science and comparative literature at Indiana University at Bloomington, who has studied language and analogies. “I find it deeply disheartening and stupid and shortsighted, personally.”
THE ATLANTIC SHOWCASES OUR VIDEO, “THE OFFICE OF MISSING CHILDREN”
In December, we released an animated video, The Office of Missing Children, about the separation of a mother and her 7-year-old son during the “zero tolerance” crackdown last summer that split up hundreds of migrant families at the border. The video was based on reporter Aura Bogado’s reporting on a contractor that housed migrant children inside a Phoenix office building.
The video recently won a national Edward R. Murrow Award and was nominated for an Emmy. Now, The Atlantic has selected it for a curated showcase of short documentary films.
Watch the video here.
Your tips have been vital to our immigration coverage. Keep them coming: [email protected]. – Laura C. Morel
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