​Flores Settlement
Immigration
Filing Date: 07/11/1985
Case Type: Class Action
Court: U.S. District Court, C.D. Cal.
Docket #: 85-cv-4544-DMG-AGR
Status: Active
Page Last Updated: April 14, 2026
The Issue
The Flores Settlement is a landmark consent decree that established nationwide minimum standards governing the treatment, placement, and release of children in immigration custody. The Flores Settlement gives CHRCL and co-counsel access to federal immigration prisons, detention centers, and other facilities across the country that confine children for immigration purposes, allowing us to monitor conditions and interview children and their families.
Summary
Background
​
The Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law (CHRCL), together with co-counsel, filed Flores v. Reno in 1985 after an undocumented mother turned to CHRCL for help because her daughter, Jenny Flores, was being imprisoned by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), now the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), in a converted hotel used to detain immigrant children. Under the INS policy at the time, the mother’s undocumented status meant she could not safely come forward to bring her daughter home without risking her own imprisonment. CHRCL and co-counsel filed suit on Jenny’s behalf, and soon after, a CHRCL attorney was able to reunite Jenny with her mother.
After years of litigation, the government ultimately settled, resulting in the Flores Settlement Agreement. The Flores Settlement established nationwide minimum standards governing the treatment, placement, and release of children in immigration custody. At its core, the Flores Settlement requires that:​​​​​​
​
-
Children must not be held for prolonged or indefinite periods in immigration prisons or detention facilities.
-
When children are imprisoned, they must be provided safe conditions and basic necessities, including access to showers, clean clothing, water, and age-appropriate food.
-
Children must be released from immigration custody as quickly as possible to a parent, family member, or other appropriate sponsor.
The Flores Settlement gives CHRCL and co-counsel access to federal immigration prisons, detention centers, and other facilities across the country that confine children for immigration purposes, allowing us to monitor conditions and interview children and their families. Flores counsel are the primary, and often the only, independent monitors of these facilities. We are charged with overseeing the government’s compliance with the Flores Settlement and seeking court enforcement when those protections are violated. Since the Flores Settlement Agreement was reached in 1997, persistent and ongoing government violations have repeatedly required Flores counsel to ask the court to enforce its terms.
Current Events
In 2025, the Trump administration restarted family detention, once again subjecting children to imprisonment in ICE detention centers with their parents. Flores counsel has continued to monitor all of the facilities where children are being imprisoned, including the Dilley Family Detention Center in Dilley, Texas, and to bring the reality of the conditions in these prisons before the court. Through monitoring visits and interviews with children and their families, Flores counsel has exposed extensive abusive treatment, inadequate medical care, lack of education, prolonged detention, and an all-encompassing climate of fear for imprisoned children. Flores counsel has filed motions to enforce the Flores Settlement and continues to fight to protect children from these ongoing violations.
At the same time that the Trump administration resumed family detention and forced children to endure dangerous conditions and ongoing violations of their rights, it is also seeking to end the Flores Settlement altogether. In August 2025, the district court denied the government’s motion and refused to terminate the Settlement, but the government appealed.
As of December 2025, the fight is now before the Ninth Circuit and arguments are set to be heard in June 2026. The government’s objective is clear: it wants to free itself from the protections that limit how long it can be imprison children and that require basic standards of care while they are in custody. Flores counsel has seen firsthand the serious medical, emotional, and psychological harm that prolonged imprisonment causes children, and we are fighting in court to preserve the Settlement and protect children from the immeasurable harm and possibility of indefinite imprisonment that would follow if its safeguards were dismantled.
​
This is not a complicated legal or moral issue.
No child should be in prison.
​​
Read our press releases about the government’s effort to terminate the Flores Settlement Agreement here, here, and here.