The Trump administration's proposal to extend the amount of time that immigrant children can be detained is incompatible with basic human values, Director of the Immigrants' Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Omar Jadwat said in a press release on Thursday.
WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 07th September, 2018) The Trump administration's proposal to extend the amount of time that immigrant children can be detained is incompatible with basic human values, Director of the Immigrants' Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Omar Jadwat said in a press release on Thursday.
Earlier on Thursday, the Trump administration proposed a regulation to end a legal agreement that prevents the federal government from detaining immigrant children for more than 20 days, according to an unpublished document in the Federal Register.
"That's the complete opposite of what we should be doing - and it's yet another example of the Trump administration's hostility toward immigrants resulting in a policy incompatible with the most basic human values," Jadwat said in the release.
The proposed regulation would terminate the 1997 Flores Settlement Agreement, a binding court deal between the government and immigrant rights litigants which states that migrant children can only be held in detention for 20 days.
Jadwat called the US government's move to jail immigrant children longer "sickening."
In June, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing his administration to seek changes in the Flores agreement in order to detain children longer.
Trump was forced to issue an order to halt family separations at the border after viral images of kids locked in cages sparked outrage across the political spectrum and drew intense levels of international opprobrium.
As a result of the "zero-tolerance" policy, about 2,600 immigrant children were forcibly separated from their parents this spring following arrests in connection with illegal entry into the United States.
