A federal judge ordered this Friday the release of the migrant children who remain with their parents in immigration and customs service detention centers (ICE), citing concerns about the health of minors during the coronavirus pandemic to argue the decision.
District Judge Dolly Gee criticized the Trump administration for putting children’s health at risk through its policy of prolonged detention of families. Gee ordered the government to release the children before July 17 confined in three centers in Texas and Pennsylvania.
The order will be applied to all children who have been detained for more than 20 days, who must be released together with their parents or, failing that, with a foster family.
Some of them have been in detention since last year.
Family detention centers are “on fire” “and there is no more time for half measures”, wrote the judge in her opinion.
In May, ICE reported that there was 184 children in these three detention centers. This is a different group than minors who cross the border without the company of a parent or guardian. About 1,000 unaccompanied children have been housed in shelters of the Department of Health and Human Services.
The number of children detained in both systems has decreased significantly compared to the start of the Trump administration, since now The United States is immediately deporting most people who cross the border without a valid visa, denying them the ability to go to court of law under the justification of the pandemic.
Gee oversees a court settlement from the 1970s known as the Flores agreement, which establishes how the Government should treat minor migrants in custody, among other obligations, not to detain them for more than 20 days.
As our sister network NBC News reported last month, ICE gave the families of the 184 detained children the possibility of releasing the minors or staying together in the centers.
All parents who were asked to appoint a sponsor to take care of their children while they were still in detention declined the authorities’ offer.
[Podcast: Madres y niños aterrados en un centro de detención: “Yo me muero si me deja aquí solito”]
Human rights activists argue that ICE should release all families from detention, especially since the coronavirus has spread rapidly in their centers.
In court filings revealed Thursday, ICE said that 11 children and parents tested positive for COVID-19 at the family detention center and Karnes City, Texas.
More than 2,500 people in ICE custody have tested positive for the disease. The agency says it has released at least 900 people it believes have increased medical risk and reduced population in its three family detention centers. But in documents filed with the court last month, the federal agency said it believed that most people in family detention were at risk of flight because they had pending deportation orders or cases under review.
With information from The Associated Press and NBC News.
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