Girl’s death while in U.S. Customs and Border Protection custody ‘clearly preventable,’ report finds

(July 2, 2019)

A federal judge has told the Trump administration it has two weeks to improve the living conditions of migrant children who are reportedly living in poor and filthy conditions at the Texas border.

U.S. District Judge Dolly M. Gee gave officials an end time of July 12, 2019, by which point a joint status report should be filed with the court.

Attorneys who represent a Class of migrant children had asked the court to force security along the Texas border to improve conditions. 

The motion asked for “Immediate judicial intervention” for Customs and Border Patrol Protection to fix the conditions at the U.S.-Mexico border.

“Unless these unsafe and unsanitary conditions at the El Paso and Rio Grande sector facilities are cured right away, the spread of illness will continue, endangering children’s lives,” the motion argues.

The motion was accompanied with declarations by physicians, children, and attorneys which portrayed the unsanitary conditions present at the Texas border.

The motion filed by the attorneys states that the children do not have access to items such as soap, showers and that they are “forced to wear soiled and inadequate clothing.”

Judge Gee noted “The Court is mindful that the emergent nature of Plaintiffs’ allegations demands immediate action.”

The judge ruled that a monitor, assigned by the court, “may, in her discretion, set other deadlines and take other measures appropriate to facilitate the prompt remediation of the conditions at issue, including the retention of an independent public health expert.”

A decades old migrant children class action lawsuit was rekindled after a motion was filed in February 2015 asking the administration to obey an 18-year-old settlement agreement in which parties agreed to provide migrant children with safe living conditions while being detained.

A New York Times article on the judges opinion stated, “Government officials have argued that they have responded as best they can to an unexpectedly large surge of new arrivals on the southern border. They disputed the reports from lawyers who visited migrant children at Clint, and said detainees were in fact being held in decent conditions with sufficient food.”

Judge Gee also noted that the administration has a difficult task dealing with the inflow of migrant children in recent years, the settlement agreement made room for such issues.

The judges stated that the settlement, “executed in 1997, contemplated such circumstances and charged Defendants with the task of preparing a ‘written plan that describes the reasonable efforts that it will take to place all minors as expeditiously as possible.’” 

The judge’s opinion also says that the administration had more than two decades to come up with a plan to provide “safe and sanitary” conditions to migrant children and that it is vital to create a plan as soon as possible.

Insider has also reported that, “The facilities, originally intended to house only adult migrants for short stays, have been jam-packed with migrants of varying ages, genders, and medical conditions in recent months as a surge in asylum-seeking families has overwhelmed Border Patrol agents.”

The plaintiffs are represented by Peter A. Schey, Carlos Holguín, Laura N. Diamond and Rachel Leach of the Center for Human Rights & Constitutional Law, Bill Ong Hing of the University of San Francisco School of Law Immigration Clinic, Kevin Askew, Elyse D. Echtman and Shaila Rahman Diwan of Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP, Michael Sorgen of La Raza Centro Legal, Jennifer Kelleher Cloyd, Katherine H. Manning and Annette Kirkham of the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley, Leecia Welch and Neha Desai of the National Center for Youth Law, and Holly S. Cooper of the University of California Davis School of Law.

The Migrant Children Class Action Lawsuit is Flores, et al. v. Barr, Case No. 2:85-cv-04544, in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.