Federal judge says detained women, children should be released

A federal judge has ruled that hundreds of immigrant women and children in holding facilities should be released, finding their detention “deplorable” and in grave violation of an earlier court settlement.

U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee said federal authorities had violated key provisions of an 18-year-old court settlement that put restrictions on the detention of immigrant children.

The ruling, released late Friday, is another blow to President Barack Obama’s immigration policies and leaves questions about what the U.S. will do with the large number of children and parents who crossed the border from Latin America last year.

Currently, the Obama administration is detaining an estimated 1,700 parents and children at three detention facilities: two in Texas and one in Pennsylvania.

In her 25-page ruling, Gee blasted federal officials, stating that children had been held in substandard conditions at the two Texas detention centers. She found “widespread and deplorable conditions in the holding cells of Border Patrol stations.” In addition, she wrote that federal officials “failed to meet even the minimal standard” of “safe and sanitary” conditions at temporary holding cells.

Gee gave the government until Aug. 3 to argue why an order she plans to issue should not be implemented within 90 days.

The judge signaled that she planned to enter a nationwide injunction requiring the Department of Homeland Security to come into compliance with a 1997 settlement that set specific legal requirements for the housing of immigrant children.

DHS plans to respond to the court’s ruling by the Aug. 3 deadline, press secretary Marsha Catron said in a prepared statement. It is unclear whether Immigration and Customs Enforcement will appeal the ruling.

Last summer, as an unprecedented number of women and children from Latin America were illegally crossing the southwest border, DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson ordered immigration authorities to dramatically expand the number of detention beds for families.

Johnson said at the time that he wanted to send a message that if people came to the U.S. illegally, they would be detained and sent home.

More than 68,000 people were apprehended along the border in fiscal year 2014. They were detained while officials decided whether they had a right to stay. Before the new detention centers for mothers and children were built, many of the apprehended were released with orders to appear at immigration offices throughout the country, because there weren’t appropriate facilities along the border to house families.