COURTS/IMMIGRATION/JUSTICE DEPARTMENT/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “A judge on Monday [7-9-18] refused the Trump administration’s request to change a longstanding federal court settlement so that officials could detain asylum-seeking families together during lengthy immigration proceedings. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Dolly M. Gee in Los Angeles further complicates the administration’s efforts to reunite more than more than 2,000 children who have been separated from their parents since this spring under a zero-tolerance policy toward illegal border-crossers. Amending the so-called Flores settlement was a central part of President Donald Trump’s executive order ending the practice of family separations. Justice Department officials had for weeks said the separations were unavoidable because the 1997 settlement bars authorities from detaining children for more than 20 days when their parents are arrested for trying to enter the U.S. illegally. Obama administration officials, facing a similar predicament, had also unsuccessfully tried to persuade the same judge to change the settlement. Judge Gee said the Justice Department offered no basis to change the settlement and called the Trump administration’s efforts to do so ‘a cynical attempt…to shift responsibility to the Judiciary for over 20 years of Congressional inaction and ill considered Executive action that have led to the current stalemate.'”
–Sadie Gurman, “Judge Blocks Effort to Detain Immigrant Families Together,” The Wall Street Journal, July 9, 2018 11:02 pm