Black Community News News and Commentary for Christians
Wherever there’s a rule or regulation, there’s exploitation. It’s human nature to find a way around barriers to get what we want. The Trump administration seeks to close at least one of those loopholes.
The Flores Settlement was a court settlement issued in 1997 in response to accusations in the 1980s that the former U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service mistreated illegal alien children. The court set limits on how long the government could keep children detained. Detainees had to be released after 20 days.
The Flores loophole is regularly exploited by human smugglers who use children as pawns to bring illegal aliens into the United States.
It’s time to protect children’s welfare and protect our border. https://t.co/E94JRTQGg6
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) August 22, 2019
The White House announced this week that it intends to terminate the Flores Settlement.
Court rulings have expanded the Flores agreement, which now effectively forces the Government to release most alien families into the country after 20 days….Congress has failed to act to close this loophole and help fix the crisis at the border….The decades-old Flores agreement is outdated and fails to account for the massive shift in illegal immigration to families and minors from Central America.
One rationale for terminating the agreement is to deter child smugglers.
The Flores loophole essentially gives a free pass into the interior of the United States to many aliens who arrive at the border with a minor….Smugglers have used this loophole as a selling point for aliens who want to cross the border and be released into the interior of the country, exploiting migrant children for profit.
The administration said terminating the agreement will help keep illegal alien families together while their cases are heard and protect the children.
Former president Barack Obama wanted an exception to the Flores Settlement in 2015. His administration detained illegal alien families and held them indefinitely.
Photo credit: By Jonathan McIntosh – Own work, CC BY 2.5, Wikimedia Commons
