End the Flores settlement on detention of children
What the document says“Congress must end the Flores Settlement Agreement by explicitly setting nationwide terms and standards for family and unaccompanied detention and housing.”
The Flores settlement sets limits on how long and in what conditions immigrant children may be held. The chapter asks Congress to end it by setting nationwide standards instead, and says those standards should allow large-scale use of temporary facilities such as tents.
What the document actually says“Congress must end the Flores Settlement Agreement by explicitly setting nationwide terms and standards for family and unaccompanied detention and housing.”
Congress must end this old court deal. It should set its own rules for holding families and children.
A court deal limits how children can be held. It sets how long and in what conditions. The book says Congress should end it. It says tents could then be used.
To provide for reconciliation pursuant to title II of H. Con. Res. 14
2025-07-04 · 139 Stat. 72
Section 90003 provides that aliens may be detained at family residential centers pending a decision on removal and, where removal is ordered, until they are removed; defines a family residential center as a facility used to detain family units including children who are not unaccompanied; and leaves detention standards for single adult capacity to the Secretary. That is Congress setting a term for family detention in statute, which is the route the chapter proposes. It is not the end of the settlement the chapter asks for: the Flores Settlement Agreement is not named or terminated, no nationwide housing standards are set, unaccompanied children are not covered, and the large scale temporary facilities the chapter has in mind are not mentioned.
The law lets families be held at family centers while a removal case runs. The agency chief sets the rules for adult sites. That puts a term for family holding into law, as the chapter asked. But it does not name or end the Flores deal, and it leaves out lone children.