On Thursday, the departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services released a joint final rule designed to override the 1997 court-ordered Flores settlement agreement that provides critical protections — such as basic sanitary conditions and a limit on the length of detention — to migrant children in government custody.
This new rule comes at a particularly precarious time for migrant children. Seven children have died in or shortly after being released from government custody in just the past 15 months. And just two days ago, an independent monitor appointed by the Flores court identified multiple ongoing alleged violations of the agreement, including lengthy overcrowding in excessively cold Border Patrol cells and dangerous medical neglect.
The above excerpt was originally published in Business Insider.
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