By Liz Nass
Gongwer News Service
Attorney General Dana Nessel joined 20 other attorneys general in opposing President Donald Trump’s efforts to change tides on a settlement agreement meant to protect children from detention in immigration enforcement efforts.
The Flores Settlement Agreement, which has been in place since 1997, ensured children in immigration custody were subject to oversight by the states where they live and children would be released without delay to parents, guardians or licensed programs. It also set standards for education and care and established conditions of confinement.
In May 2025, the Trump administration moved to terminate the agreement, which could expand family detention and increase the duration of child detention.
The coalition of attorneys general filed a brief with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last week to block the latest attempt to end the agreement.
“It is simply unconscionable to lock children in immigration detention centers and deprive them of the most basic things they need, like healthcare, education, sanitary needs, and the care they deserve,” Nessel said in a statement. “Forcing kids to remain in prolonged detention while stripping away longstanding protections only inflicts lasting harm and ignores the law and our responsibility to treat kids with human decency. I am proud to stand with my colleagues in support of children’s well-being.”
Nessel first sued the Trump administration for trying to terminate the agreement during his first term in 2019. A federal court halted almost all the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s regulations and did not terminate the agreement.
The latest attempt to terminate the agreement in May was also rejected by a district court, but the federal government appealed the decision to the Court of Appeals where it currently awaits decision.
In the brief, the coalition says the termination attempts interfere with states’ sovereign role to ensure the welfare of children by undermining state licensing requirements for facilities that hold children.
Ana Raquel Devereaux, senior managing attorney for the Michigan Immigration Rights Center, said although Michigan has a good reputation for its facilities and guardianship standards, there is growing concern around the hurdles families must jump to remove their children from detention.
She said Michigan, like the rest of the nation, is seeing increased red tape in federal immigration enforcement and the Office of Refugee Resettlement standards in getting children in the hands of foster parents or guardians instead of in state custody while other family members are detained.
“The number of hurdles that have been introduced are quite significant, and they continue to change and evolve,” Devereaux said. “Some of them are quite formal in terms of changes in ORR policy to say, now we have to do home studies more frequently or for everybody. And it’s not that home studies are bad, it’s just when they are being used as sort of a delay tactic or an additional hurdle.”
With the expansion of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement oversight, Devereaux said, they are seeing fewer guardians come forward for children because they are afraid of being referred to ICE.
Michigan has one facility that is licensed to have about 100 children but usually has a few dozen kids at a time. Other licensed facilities that fall under the Flores agreement include individual family homes, group homes and shelters.
There have been no instances in the state of family detention because of this agreement, and there have not been any recent reports of abuse that have gone unchecked in the system, Devereaux said.
But this oversight comes from the powers of this agreement, Devereaux said, which provides enforcement authority the protections if ongoing violations arose. Although some conditions of facilities have been enshrined into general rules for facilities during former President Joe Biden’s administration, the state’s ability to oversee its own facilities are at stake in this attempt at termination.
Devereaux said she believes the overall goal to terminate the settlement is to get rid of the system that exists separately for children and return to family detention where ICE has more oversight, an agency she says continuously licenses facilities with long histories of abuse.
“(The settlement) allows that universality of how we treat children in Michigan across the country, but without the Flores settlement state licensing requirements, we end up in a position where just because a child is in the federal foster care system or the federal custodial system, because they have no parent here, they are going through a completely different experience of much less protection than the child who’s in the domestic foster care system, and so we want all children to have all the protections that all children are entitled to, and we don’t want a distinction based on immigrant status,” Devereaux said.
Gongwer News Service
Attorney General Dana Nessel joined 20 other attorneys general in opposing President Donald Trump’s efforts to change tides on a settlement agreement meant to protect children from detention in immigration enforcement efforts.
The Flores Settlement Agreement, which has been in place since 1997, ensured children in immigration custody were subject to oversight by the states where they live and children would be released without delay to parents, guardians or licensed programs. It also set standards for education and care and established conditions of confinement.
In May 2025, the Trump administration moved to terminate the agreement, which could expand family detention and increase the duration of child detention.
The coalition of attorneys general filed a brief with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last week to block the latest attempt to end the agreement.
“It is simply unconscionable to lock children in immigration detention centers and deprive them of the most basic things they need, like healthcare, education, sanitary needs, and the care they deserve,” Nessel said in a statement. “Forcing kids to remain in prolonged detention while stripping away longstanding protections only inflicts lasting harm and ignores the law and our responsibility to treat kids with human decency. I am proud to stand with my colleagues in support of children’s well-being.”
Nessel first sued the Trump administration for trying to terminate the agreement during his first term in 2019. A federal court halted almost all the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s regulations and did not terminate the agreement.
The latest attempt to terminate the agreement in May was also rejected by a district court, but the federal government appealed the decision to the Court of Appeals where it currently awaits decision.
In the brief, the coalition says the termination attempts interfere with states’ sovereign role to ensure the welfare of children by undermining state licensing requirements for facilities that hold children.
Ana Raquel Devereaux, senior managing attorney for the Michigan Immigration Rights Center, said although Michigan has a good reputation for its facilities and guardianship standards, there is growing concern around the hurdles families must jump to remove their children from detention.
She said Michigan, like the rest of the nation, is seeing increased red tape in federal immigration enforcement and the Office of Refugee Resettlement standards in getting children in the hands of foster parents or guardians instead of in state custody while other family members are detained.
“The number of hurdles that have been introduced are quite significant, and they continue to change and evolve,” Devereaux said. “Some of them are quite formal in terms of changes in ORR policy to say, now we have to do home studies more frequently or for everybody. And it’s not that home studies are bad, it’s just when they are being used as sort of a delay tactic or an additional hurdle.”
With the expansion of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement oversight, Devereaux said, they are seeing fewer guardians come forward for children because they are afraid of being referred to ICE.
Michigan has one facility that is licensed to have about 100 children but usually has a few dozen kids at a time. Other licensed facilities that fall under the Flores agreement include individual family homes, group homes and shelters.
There have been no instances in the state of family detention because of this agreement, and there have not been any recent reports of abuse that have gone unchecked in the system, Devereaux said.
But this oversight comes from the powers of this agreement, Devereaux said, which provides enforcement authority the protections if ongoing violations arose. Although some conditions of facilities have been enshrined into general rules for facilities during former President Joe Biden’s administration, the state’s ability to oversee its own facilities are at stake in this attempt at termination.
Devereaux said she believes the overall goal to terminate the settlement is to get rid of the system that exists separately for children and return to family detention where ICE has more oversight, an agency she says continuously licenses facilities with long histories of abuse.
“(The settlement) allows that universality of how we treat children in Michigan across the country, but without the Flores settlement state licensing requirements, we end up in a position where just because a child is in the federal foster care system or the federal custodial system, because they have no parent here, they are going through a completely different experience of much less protection than the child who’s in the domestic foster care system, and so we want all children to have all the protections that all children are entitled to, and we don’t want a distinction based on immigrant status,” Devereaux said.
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