CHILDREN/DHS/IMMIGRATION/JUSTICE DEPARTMENT/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Trump administration officials told a Senate panel on Tuesday [9-18-18] that a decades-old court ruling that limits the length of time migrant children can be detained hampers the government’s ability to stem illegal immigration, and needs to be amended by Congress. The officials, from the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department, said the 1997 consent decree known as the Flores agreement had encouraged hundreds of thousands of migrants to illegally cross the southwestern border with their children, knowing that they will not be detained if they are traveling with minors. Under the court agreement, migrant children cannot be detained for more than 20 days…Joseph Edlow, an acting deputy assistant attorney general, said modifying the court agreement would ‘cut off one of the pull-factors’ for migrants coming to the United States from Central American countries. The hearing comes nearly two weeks after the Trump administration proposed a new regulation to allow the government to sidestep the decree and detain children with their parents while their cases are being considered by immigration courts.”
–Ron Nixon, “Trump Officials Urge End of Time Limits on Detaining Migrant Children,” The New York Times online, September 18, 2018