With the separation of children from their families at the Southern Border and the children lost in the system, attention has been brought to the 1997 agreement in Reno v. Flores.
Named after Jenny Lisette Flores, a 15-year-old girl who fled El Salvador in 1985 and tried to enter the U.S. to live with her aunt, but was arrested by the Immigration and Naturalization Service at the border and placed in a juvenile detention center being handcuffed and strip searched in the process, the agreement requires the U.S. government to release migrant children from detention without unnecessary delay to their parents, adult relatives, or programs licensed to care for them within the specified time period of 20 days.
It rules out indefinite detention.
It also requires that immigration officials provide basic needs like food, water, toilets, and emergency medical care.
The decision came after the American Civil Liberties Union filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of Flores and other minors in similar situations because the Immigration and Naturalization Service would not give Flores’ aunt custody as it was not allowed to release children to third-party adults.
The Reno in the name is Janet Reno, Bill Clinton’s attorney general.
Bill Clinton is a member of the political party Trump claims just wants to let people sashay across the border, as is Obama for whose border fence repairs Trump has taken credit.
In July 2018, after The Trump administration sought to indefinitely detain migrant children, U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee in Los Angeles, California, rejected the attempt by the Justice Department to modify the Flores agreement by requesting a longer period of time to be able to detain migrant children than the allowed 20 days.
At the Border Patrol station in Calexico, California, on Friday, Trump spoke out against the Reno v. Flores decision in his usual way of having plenty of bluster without knowing what he was all blustery about.
“Some very bad court decisions. The Flores decision is a disaster. I have to tell you, Judge Flores, whoever you may be, that decision was a disaster for our country. A disaster and we’re working on that.”
Again, Jenny Lisette Flores was not the judge but the 15-year-old girl who fled El Salvador in 1985.