The South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley houses women and children, mostly from Central America, caught crossing the border illegally.﻿

A pair of South Texas detention centers are violating a landmark settlement by continuing to hold immigrant women and children facing deportation, a federal judge in California ruled.

It's unclear what impact the decision would have on the detention centers in Dilley and Karnes County. They have 90 days to comply with the ruling or explain to the judge why it shouldn't apply.

"We are disappointed with the court's decision and are reviewing it in consultation with the Department of Justice. We plan to respond to the Court's order to show cause by August 3," said Marsha Catron, a Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman.

Some experts said they hope the government doesn't opt to appeal the decision.

"They've come out recently with reforms, and they've suggested they're going to curtail family detention, but they've never said they're going to end family detention," said Rachel Freed, a legal expert and senior program leader for Rights at Risk Program, part of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee.

The two South Texas detention facilities, which combined hold more than 2,000 women and children, were at the center of a ruling U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee handed down late Friday.

Gee wrote that the large-scale detention of families in Dilley and Karnes County violated the Flores settlement, a 1997 agreement between the government and immigrant rights activists that determined immigration officials could not hold children in unlicensed, secure facilities for more than three to five days, depending on whether there's a licensed facility nearby, and must release them to a family member or guardian "without unnecessary delay."

'A stinging rebuke'

Her ruling makes almost no mention of recent announcements by the Department of Homeland Security that families held in Karnes will be released as soon as they pass their credible fear or reasonable fear interviews, the first step in the asylum process. Even under that policy, the government would likely not be in compliance with the Flores agreement, said Jonathan Ryan, executive director of the San Antonio nonprofit Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services.

"It would not appear to comport with the judge's order, to hold the children or their mothers in detention for the weeks or up to a month it takes to undergo or receive a response to the credible fear interview, so that does not seem prompt or without delay," Ryan said. "The result of this order is that the families will have to be released by immigration officials and cited to appear before an immigration judge in the city where they're going to reside."

It usually takes U.S. Customs and Border Protection several days just to process immigrants detained at the border, said Ranjana Natarajan, director of the civil rights clinic at the University of Texas School of Law.

"After that initial stage of processing at the border, in a CBP facility, the government cannot transfer families for longer period of detention, to a family detention facility that is either unlicensed or secure or both," said Natarajan, who was one of the attorneys asking Gee to enforce the Flores agreement.

"This is a stinging rebuke of the government's family detention policy," she said. This is a failed policy, it is inhumane to children and it unnecessarily put them behind bars when they had done nothing wrong and were seeking asylum."

In recent weeks, ICE has been issuing notices to appear in immigration court to new arrivals at the Dilley and Karnes County detention centers before they have their credible fear interviews, Ryan said. That may mean the government is trying to more quickly release families, he said.

Earlier this year, in response to immigration officials constructing the 2,400-bed facility in Dilley and converting the 500-bed facility in Karnes County to hold families, activists asked Gee to enforce the settlement agreement. That kicked off months of legal wrangling over issues like whether the settlement applied only to unaccompanied minors and whether U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement should release children to parents who are in the country illegally.

Conditions criticized

Gee ruled that the settlement applies to all immigrant children, and dismissed the government's argument that releasing them could put them in danger.

Immigration officials "must release an accompanying parent as long as doing so would not create a flight risk or a safety risk," Gee wrote.

She went on to criticize the conditions in Border Patrol holding cells, where immigrants are processed before being released or sent to a detention center, saying they don't comply with the settlement either.

ICE began large-scale detention of families last year, after more than 100,000 women and children, mostly from Central America, were detained crossing the border in the Rio Grande Valley. Before that, the agency only had about 100 beds at a facility in Pennsylvania.

The decision to open the detention center in Dilley and Karnes County was made "to avoid a situation, after apprehension, in which we simply processed these individuals, escorted them to bus stations and released them," Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said in a statement last month.

"Our larger hope is that Central American families will heed our repeated calls to find a safe and lawful path for the migration of children to the United States," Johnson said.

The centers have schools, playgrounds and medical facilities, but advocates have said that even under excellent conditions, women and children fleeing violence are being traumatized.

"You can't use these jail-like facilities to hold children," Freed said. "These are asylum seekers, and they have a right by international and U.S. law to come to our country and seek asylum here."

The detention policy has spawned several other lawsuits, including a ruling in February by a federal judge in Washington, D.C., telling the government it couldn't have a blanket policy of holding families without bond as a deterrent to those considering coming here.

Ryan said he thinks the point of the policy all along has been to send a message to Central American families that they'll be incarcerated if they come to the U.S.

"It is really a matter of getting away with as much as you can for as long as you can and letting the justice system try to catch up with you," he said.
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