Trump Bid to Undo Child Detention Pact Gets Brisk Court Response

The Trump administration’s request to unwind a 29-year-old settlement governing the treatment of migrant children in federal detention got a cold reception before a federal appeals court at Tuesday hearing.

The administration lacks justification to end the 1997 consent decree, known as the Flores Settlement Agreement, the three judges on the panel indicated.

Judge Marsha Berzon of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said the Department of Homeland Security’s existing regulations on handling migrant children don’t sufficiently address the many conditions of the Flores settlement, which requires safe and sanitary facilities, limits on detention length, and release to family members when possible.

Berzon, an appointee of President Bill Clinton, said the district court judge overseeing the consent decree has collected evidence of migrant children subject to inhumane conditions in detention centers.

“You’re saying there’s no possible constitutional problem?” Berzon asked the Trump administration’s attorney, Brett Shumate. “However you keep the children, whether you let them leave or not, whatever conditions you keep them in, there’s no constitutional problem?”

Shumate said the plaintiffs in the case aren’t bringing constitutional claims but instead litigating under the high bar of the Flores agreement.

“If those facts do exist, the plaintiffs can bring a new claim, bring in new lawsuits, maybe somewhere in Texas, maybe in New Mexico,” Shumate said. “We shouldn’t have a single federal judge dictating the policy with regard to a class of hundreds of thousands and if not millions of aliens at the border on the basis of a 30-year-old consent decree.”

The Trump administration last year moved to fully end the consent decree, arguing it hinders executive power over foreign relations and citing major changes to immigration law and migrant patterns.

Judge Dolly M. Gee of the Los Angeles-based US District Court for the Central District of California, who oversees the settlement, declined the administration’s request.

At the hearing, Carlos Holguin of the Center for Human Rights & Constitutional Law, who represents the plaintiffs, said the appeals court should remand the case back to Gee where they can develop a better factual record as to the current conditions of migrant children in detention.

Ninth Circuit Judges William Fletcher, a Clinton appointee, and Milan Smith, an appointee of President George W. Bush, also sat on the panel.

The case is Flores v. Blanche, 9th Cir., No. 25-6308, 6/2/26.