President Donald Trump’s administration has reactivated its efforts to eliminate one of the legal pillars protecting migrant minors detained in the United States: the Flores Agreement, in force since 1997.
The administration filed an appeal to a federal court in California on Wednesday requesting its total cancellation.
What is the Flores Agreement?
The Flores Agreement was born after the case of Jenny Lisette Flores, a 15-year-old Salvadoran teenager who in 1985 crossed the border alone fleeing the civil war in her country.
She was arrested, strip-searched and locked up for months in a juvenile facility without access to education or family contact.
The lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) resulted in a legal settlement that imposed minimum conditions for the treatment of minors in immigration custody.
Protections that could disappear
If the Flores Agreement is annulled, key rights would be eliminated, such as:
That minors be detained in licensed childcare facilities
Mandatory access to health, education and recreation services
Rapid release with a family member, legal guardian or sponsor
External monitoring of the treatment received by human rights lawyers
These guarantees have become the only legal framework that protects thousands of migrant children every year, especially those who arrive alone or in contexts of violence.
What the Trump administration says
The Trump administration argues that the Flores Agreement limits the Executive Branch to enforce stricter immigration policies.
He notes that it has “altered the immigration landscape” by removing factors that previously deterred families from entering the country without documents.
They also claim that conditions in detention centers have improved significantly since the 1990s and that current judicial intervention is unnecessary.
This is not the first time
Trump had already tried to eliminate this agreement during his first term, but was stopped by an appeals court.
In 2014, the Barack Obama administration also sought to modify it in the face of the increase of unaccompanied minors at the border, although without success.
De aprobarse la solicitud del gobierno, los niños podrían ser detenidos por tiempo indefinido, incluso en centros sin certificación infantil y sin acceso garantizado a servicios básicos
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For many experts, this would open the door to abuses, negligence and undignified conditions, such as those denounced in past decades.
Concern among organizations
Buzzy
Groups such as the ACLU, Human Rights Watch and other human rights organizations have warned about the risks of this measure.
They believe that the current protections are the ethical minimum that should be guaranteed to any minor, regardless of immigration status.
According to data from the Department of Health and Human Services, more than 130,000 minors were in federal custody in 2023.
Of these, more than 85% were from Latin American countries, mainly Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Mexico.
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