The Trump administration on Thursday moved to abandon a longstanding court settlement that limits how long immigrant children can be kept locked up, proposing new regulations that would allow the government to detain families until their immigration cases are decided.
Homeland Security officials said that ending the so-called Flores agreement of 1997 will speed up the handling of asylum requests while also deterring people from illegally crossing the Mexican border.
The move angered immigrant rights advocates and is all but certain to trigger a court battle.
"It is sickening to see the United States government looking for ways to jail more children for longer," said Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project.
"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."
For decades, because of those restrictions, many parents and children caught trying to slip into the country have been released into the US while their asylum requests wind their way through the courts a practice President Donald Trump has decried as "catch-and-release."
"This rule addresses one of the primary pull factors for illegal immigration and allows the federal government to enforce immigration laws as passed by Congress."
The ACLU's Jadwat accused the administration of "trying to expand the trauma it is inflicting on these children in order to deter other people from coming to the country."
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