Last Updated on August 16, 2025 by ThePublic
There are moments in history when the moral character of a nation is revealed not by its prosperity, but by how it treats the most vulnerable in its care. The Trump administration’s repeated attempts to dismantle the Flores Settlement Agreement, the decades old legal safeguard ensuring migrant children receive food, water, education, and medical care, is one such revealing moment.
Judge Dolly Gee’s latest ruling makes clear what should be obvious to anyone with a conscience: children deserve the most basic care and dignity, regardless of where they were born or how they arrived in this country. And yet, this administration has tried twice to eliminate these protections, labeling them an “intrusive regime” simply because it places a moral and legal obligation on the government not to neglect or abuse children.
What’s at Stake
The Flores Settlement has been the last line of defense against indefinite detention, squalid conditions, and unchecked government abuse of migrant children. Without it, independent monitors would lose access, and the same agencies already found to violate these standards would be left to police themselves.
The record speaks for itself:
- Children held in frigid, windowless rooms without showers or privacy.
- Kids denied soap, toothbrushes, and basic hygiene, an argument so shocking it stunned federal judges in 2019.
- Inadequate medical care, extreme heat, and prolonged detention that crushes children’s mental health.
This is not policy. This is cruelty masquerading as governance.
Under the 1997 consent decree, migrants who are 17 years old and younger must be held in the “least restrictive” setting while efforts are made to expeditiously release them. The minors must receive adequate meals, clean water, clothing, education and medical assistance, among other basic needs. – The New York Times
The Administration’s Excuse
The government claims Flores “fuels unlawful crossings” by incentivizing parents to bring children. But let’s be blunt, children are not pawns. They are not deterrents. They are not tools in some political chess game. To argue that the solution to immigration challenges is to deny children food, water, and medical care is as morally bankrupt as it is legally indefensible.
As Judge Gee pointed out, detention conditions have worsened even as border crossings have fallen. That suggests not accident, but willful neglect.
A Pattern of Contempt
From the start, this administration has made its hostility toward migrant children clear. It has argued against providing them soap and towels. It has sought to expand detention instead of investing in humane alternatives. And it has framed the very idea of treating children with dignity as an unfair burden.
Let’s be honest, if a parent anywhere in America deprived a child of food, medical care, or basic hygiene, they would be arrested for neglect. They’d also most likely loose their children to the social services nightmare. Yet when the government does it, it calls it “policy.”
Why This Matters
This is about more than immigration law. It’s about whether the United States can still claim to uphold the bare minimum of human decency. Stripping children of their dignity, in the name of deterrence or convenience, is not just morally repugnant. It is a stain that will remain long after today’s politics have passed.
As Leecia Welch of Children’s Rights put it, Flores is “the last line of defense against this administration’s plans to round up and detain children indefinitely in conditions no child deserves.”
We should not need a court to remind us that children deserve food, water, and safety. And yet here we are, watching an administration fight to prove the opposite. That isn’t just policy failure. That’s a sickness at the heart of governance itself.