Thread by @Alyssa_Milano

Even as hundreds of separated children remain terrified & alone in detention, the Trump Administration is moving to try & replace family separation with indefinite family incarceration in an unacceptable bid to jail children indefinitely and subject them to more trauma and abuse.

To move this plan forward, the Trump Administration is trying to strip away existing safeguards and protections for children through a new regulation to allow for the long-term imprisonment of children in facilities with well-documented abusive conditions.

The number one priority of the Flores Settlement Agreement is that children not be incarcerated. This foundational principle, which the government agreed to in the settlement, recognizes that the best way to ensure a child’s wellbeing is to keep them out of jail.

The Administration is attempting to dismantle the Flores standards of protection that have been in place for decades.

#FamiliesBelongTogetherANDFree

The proposed regulations allow DHS to jail children indefinitely while DHS “self-certifies” that the jails are safe. This is a power grab by an agency that cannot be trusted, as DHS has proved itself unable or unwilling to ensure the basic safety and health of people it jails.

This Administration ripped children out of their parents arms to intentionally torment and traumatize them. Allowing them to set the standard of care for immigrant children is like letting the fox guard the henhouse.

#FamiliesBelongTogetherANDFree

These rules fail to meet the legal requirements established in the Flores Settlement agreement, which requires that all children be treated with "dignity, respect, and special concern for their particular vulnerability as minors."

#FamiliesBelongTogetherANDFree

Simply put, this attempt by the Trump administration to destroy Flores should not move forward.

#FamiliesBelongTogetherANDFree

DHS’s own advisors recommended that DHS should discontinue & “detention is generally neither appropriate nor necessary for families - and that detention the separation of families for purposes of immigration enforcement or management are never in the best interest of children.”

The Administration is failing to protect children even with the Flores standard in place. Children suffer cruel & abusive treatment in detention facilities, including family detention facilities, where they have been starved, taunted, physically assaulted @ forced to strip naked.

At the Karnes family detention center in Texas, which incarcerates recently reunited families, authorities intentionally recreated trauma for children by tearing them away from their parents again to punish parents for protesting inhumane treatment.

In July, a federal judge ordered the Trump Administration to remove children from a detention center that was using psychotropic drugs as a “chemical straitjacket” -- just one example of the torture children experience in detention.

#FamiliesBelongTogetherANDFree

The judge also ordered an independent monitor to review alleged abuses at other child detention centers along the border.

#FamiliesBelongTogetherANDFree

Eliminating the Flores Settlement is an attempt to end court oversight of the administration’s treatment of immigration children and prevent independent monitoring of the detention facilities.

#FamiliesBelongTogetherANDFree

This is not the time to allow DHS, the agency responsible for the abuse and separation of children, to regulate itself.

#FamiliesBelongTogetherANDFree

Eliminating the Flores Settlement is an attempt to end court oversight of the administration’s treatment of immigration children and prevent independent monitoring of the detention facilities.

#FamiliesBelongTogetherANDFree

The proposed rule also allows both DHS & ORR to reevaluate whether a child is unaccompanied even after a child's case has begun--a move that could strip children of critical child-appropriate protections and procedures, and frustrate access to due process&humanitarian protection.

This subjects children to harsh questioning by DHS at nearly any encounter with immigration officials, including at the moment of requesting asylum.

#FamiliesBelongTogetherANDFree

Moreover, many children will face this alone, without the help of a lawyer, as there is no appointed counsel for children in deportation proceedings.

#FamiliesBelongTogetherANDFree

The regulations themselves cite family detention as an “effective enforcement tool” -- a clear admission that the Administration is focused not on protecting the basic safety and health of children under Flores but on carrying out draconian punishments on asylum-seeking families.

This attempt by the administration to manipulate the rules is nothing more than a ploy to further abuse and traumatize immigrant children and violate their human rights. #FamiliesBelongTogetherANDFree

Children do not belong behind bars. Replacing family separation with family incarceration will only subject children to more trauma and abuse.

#FamiliesBelongTogetherANDFree