5. Department of Homeland Security · Major · Needs Congress
End the Flores Settlement Agreement by statute
Printed page 148 5. Department of Homeland Security
“Congress must end the Flores Settlement Agreement by explicitly setting nationwide terms and standards for family and unaccompanied detention and housing. Such standards should focus on meeting human needs and should allow for large-scale use of temporary facilities (for example, tents).”
What has happened
- Blocked
Judge Gee denied the motion to terminate, holding that 8 U.S.C. §1252(f)(1) poses no obstacle to continued supervision of the agreement and that there was "nothing new under the sun regarding the facts or the law" since the government's earlier attempt. The agreement remains in force. The government appealed (9th Cir. No. 25-6308, docketed 2025-10-07); the appeal was argued on 2026-06-02 before Judges W. Fletcher, Berzon and M. Smith and was undecided as of 2026-08-27. Congress has still enacted nothing: Public Law 119-21 §§100051(a)(5) and 100052 fund family detention but set no nationwide standards and do not touch the agreement.
- Attempted
Congress has not legislated. The administration moved instead in the Central District of California to terminate the Flores Settlement Agreement outright, under Rules 60(b)(4), (5) and (6) — an executive route to an ask the Mandate directs at Congress, and one that would end the agreement without setting the nationwide standards the Quote asks for.
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
- Reviewed 2026-08-27: the motion and the denial were read from the government’s own opening brief on appeal, retrieved through CourtListener’s RECAP archive — the district court docket itself is pre-window and not in RECAP, and the news reports below still could not be read. That brief supplies both dates (moved 2025-05-22; denied 2025-08-15) and the court’s reasoning, so the Status moved off unverified.
- Leads (allowlisted but could not be read): The Hill, “Judge denies Trump administration request to end a policy protecting immigrant children in custody”, https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5456060-trump-administration-migrant-children-protection-ruling/ ; Washington Post, 2025-08-08, “Judge to consider the fate of an agreement on protecting immigrant children in US custody”, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/2025/08/08/trump-immigration-detention-children-flores-settlement/f84a0ffe-740c-11f0-84e0-485bb531abeb_story.html ; Axios, 2025-08-08, https://www.axios.com/2025/08/08/trump-immigration-children-detention-oversight . Search snippets say the motion was filed in May 2025, argued 2025-08-08 and denied, with Judge Gee calling the bid “déjà vu” after the 2019 attempt.
- Dockets (leads): Flores v. Blanche, 9th Cir. 25-6308, https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/71583282/flores-v-blanche-et-al/ (filed 2025-10-07, found by CourtListener keyword search); Flores v. Bondi, 9th Cir. (filed 2025-02-07, the CBP-settlement extension appeal), https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69623620/flores-v-bondi-et-al/ ; the underlying case is C.D. Cal. 2:85-cv-04544 (pre-window, not in CourtListener’s bulk docket snapshot).
- Congress: Public Law 119-21 §100051(a)(5) funds detaining parents “with the alien’s child” and §100052 funds family detention capacity, but nothing in the act sets the nationwide detention standards or terminates the agreement. No bill titled for Flores or family detention was found among bills in Congress.
- Action
- eliminate
- Object
- Flores Settlement Agreement
- ID
- 351