Thursday, 28 Mar 2024

What to Know About the Flores Agreement and Why It Matters Now

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The cycle has become familiar: Images emerge of migrant children being held in cramped, dirty facilities, without hygiene products or adult caregivers.

Those conditions are challenged in courts, and judges order officials to fix them.

At the heart of those court orders is a 22-year-old consent decree known as the Flores agreement.

It was the result of a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of five girls who had been held at a dingy, overcrowded converted motel in Pasadena, alongside adult strangers, surrounded by a barricade of razor wire.

My colleague Miriam Jordan, who’s based in Los Angeles and covers immigration, spoke to one of the plaintiffs, as well as the lawyers who — with an unexpected nudge from the television legend Ed Asner — took up the cause of migrant children as their lives’ work.

Here’s what you need to know about the landmark agreement:

How did it come about?

Almost 35 years ago, an influx of Central American families was making their way to the southern border, fleeing violence, including government death squads in El Salvador.

Among them was Alma Yanira Cruz, who was then 12 and heading for L.A. to join her mother when she was taken to that overcrowded motel that was converted into a detention center.

When Miriam met her recently, she said the memories were too painful to discuss, so her mother described what her daughter had experienced: “She told me they didn’t give her enough food. She told me she fell out of a high bunk bed.”

She was strip searched and denied visits with relatives.

At the time, two public-interest lawyers, Carlos Holguin and Peter Schey, were working in what was then the central hub of a growing immigrant-rights movement in L.A.

Ed Asner had heard about Ms. Cruz’s case and called on the lawyers to intervene.

After years of legal back-and-forth, the settlement was reached in 1997.

[Read the full story about the Flores agreement here.]

What effect has it had?

The agreement set the minimum standards for the treatment of the nation’s youngest and most vulnerable new arrivals — standards that exist today.

They could no longer be held in hard-core detention facilities. Instead, the agreement requires them to be released quickly to a family member or guardian, or transferred to a licensed care facility and not a jail.

A later interpretation limited the time most children can spend in detention to no more than 20 days.

[Read Miriam’s Twitter thread about the agreement here.]

Why is it important to know about now?

Although the Obama administration in 2014 tried and failed to get out from under the Flores agreement’s limits, the current White House has been pushing to eliminate the agreement.

And on Wednesday, the Trump administration unveiled a new rule that would allow families who illegally cross the border to be detained indefinitely. Officials said the effort will help avoid having to either separate families or release them while they wait for their cases to be heard.

Critics say it’s purposefully brutal treatment of families fleeing gang violence, abuse and poverty aimed at reducing the flow of immigration.

A federal judge would still have to approve the new rule.

[Read more about the Trump administration’s new regulation.]

Here’s what else we’re following

We often link to sites that limit access for nonsubscribers. We appreciate your reading Times coverage, but we also encourage you to support local news if you can.

Officers found high-powered guns, ammunition and tactical gear at the home of a Long Beach Marriott employee who was arrested after telling a colleague he planned to carry out mass violence at his workplace. The city’s police chief commended the hotel’s staff for quickly alerting the authorities. [Long Beach Post]

More videos have emerged apparently showing students of a Garden Grove high school making Nazi salutes and wrapping themselves in a Confederate flag. [ABC 7]

If you missed it, a 34-year-old man was charged with murder in the death of his mother, who was his conservator because he had been diagnosed with catatonic schizophrenia. It was the first reported homicide in Laguna Beach since 2012. [The Daily Pilot]

The love life of P-22 the mountain lion is about to get a lot more interesting: Transportation officials and conservationists are set to build what is believed to be the world’s biggest wildlife crossing over the 101. [The Associated Press]

Advanced computing techniques have made it possible to detect the smaller earthquakes that take place before the ones it’s possible for us to feel. [The Los Angeles Times]

Ten people survived a plane crash at Oroville Airport. The crash ignited a small grass fire, but it was quickly put out. [The Oroville Mercury-Register]

Alice Walker, the author, poet and activist, spoke out in favor of keeping a contested New Deal-era mural at a San Francisco school that graphically depicts the life of George Washington. “This feeling that everybody now is so tenderhearted that they can’t bear to know their history is ridiculous,” she said. [The New York Times]

If a legally binding social media repost sounds obviously bogus to you, then you are not Julia Roberts, Taraji P. Henson, Judd Apatow, Usher, Nancy Meyers, Retta, Julianne Moore, Tina Knowles Lawson or Rick Perry, the United States secretary of energy.” [The New York Times]

Connect with The Times in person at an event on Sept. 11. C.J. Chivers, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Times reporter and Marine veteran, will moderate a panel discussion at U.S.C. about the lasting effects of less-than-honorable discharges from the military. [RSVP]

Brand management

The Unincorporated Life is a summer camp for young entrepreneurs, where James Van Der Beek’s 7-year-old son performed as DJ Clawz and North West learned to sew. [The New York Times]

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s first pet was an otter named Potter. (Also, there is an otter video at the link.) [The Sacramento Bee]

The “booster era” of L.A. went from about 1885 to 1925, when Southern California was sold to the world as a Spanish utopia, the land of sunshine, the “Home of Contented Labor,” and “The New Beulah Land.” They’re the images that have stuck. [Curbed Los Angeles]

And Finally …

Has your love for California made it tough for you to recognize all the other states?

Now, thanks to the good people of our Past Tense team, who get to look through The Times’s photo archives, you can put your skills to the test.

Can you guess which state each of 50 distinctive images shows? Before you get too intimidated, there are clues and it’s multiple choice. (And one more hint: The one above is not California — we didn’t want to spoil anything.)

California Today goes live at 6:30 a.m. Pacific time weekdays. Tell us what you want to see: [email protected]. Were you forwarded this email? Sign up for California Today here.

Jill Cowan grew up in Orange County, graduated from U.C. Berkeley and has reported all over the state, including the Bay Area, Bakersfield and Los Angeles — but she always wants to see more. Follow along here or on Twitter, @jillcowan.

California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and graduated from U.C. Berkeley.

Jill Cowan is the California Today correspondent, keeping tabs on the most important things happening in her home state every day. @jillcowan

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