Flores Settlement Agreement: Requirements, Enforcement, and Status

The Flores Settlement Agreement is a 1997 federal court settlement that sets nationwide minimum standards for how the U.S. government must treat, house, and release immigrant children in its custody. It requires a general policy of releasing children without unnecessary delay, holding them in the least restrictive, safe, and sanitary setting, using state-licensed facilities, and — with narrow exceptions — releasing them within 20 days. As of 2026 the agreement is still in force: on August 15, 2025, U.S. District Judge Dolly M. Gee denied the government’s motion to terminate it, and the Ninth Circuit is considering the appeal in Flores v. Bondi.¹²

What the Agreement Requires

The settlement’s obligations run to the federal government whenever it detains an immigrant child, and they fall into a few clear categories.

Release. The government must follow a “general policy favoring release” of children from detention.³ Children must be released “without unnecessary delay” to a parent first, then to other family members such as grandparents or adult siblings, then to licensed programs or other responsible adults.⁴

Conditions. Children must be held in the “least restrictive setting” appropriate for their age and needs, in facilities that are “safe and sanitary.” Those facilities must provide toilets, clean drinking water, food, medical and dental care, temperature control, clothing, education, recreation, counseling, and family contact regardless of immigration status.⁵

Licensing. Detention facilities must be licensed by the appropriate state agency to care for dependent children and must comply with applicable state child welfare laws and local building, fire, health, and safety codes.⁵

Time limits. Children must generally be released within 20 days. Extended detention is permitted during a declared emergency or when an influx of 130 or more children overwhelms capacity. Any child detained beyond 72 hours requires documented records, including biographical information and hearing dates.⁵

Judicial review. Individual detained children can go to U.S. District Court to challenge their placement or allege that a facility is failing to meet the required standards.³

One design feature matters for the agreement’s longevity. The settlement was written to expire 45 days after the government published final regulations implementing its terms. The Immigration and Naturalization Service never did, and no administration since has issued regulations that a court has found adequate to replace it.⁶

Who the Agreement Covers

The original settlement addressed unaccompanied minors. In 2015, U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee ruled that its protections — including placement in the least restrictive setting and transfer to licensed, non-secure facilities — also applied to children traveling with their parents. In 2016 the Ninth Circuit affirmed, holding that the 20-day limit and other protections cover accompanied minors as well.⁷

That expansion is what makes the settlement bite when families arrive together: the government must either release the family within 20 days or hold the parents while transferring the children, since it cannot detain the children with the parents indefinitely.⁸

Custody of unaccompanied children shifted from INS to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) within the Department of Health and Human Services in 2003, following the Homeland Security Act of 2002. ORR runs a network of care providers, screens sponsors, and makes release decisions through Federal Field Specialists who hold final authority on transfers.⁹¹⁰

How the Agreement Is Enforced

Judge Gee of the Central District of California has overseen the case for years and remains the enforcement authority. She has repeatedly found the government in noncompliance. Documented conditions in Customs and Border Protection facilities — freezing temperatures, lights left on around the clock preventing sleep, and children confined for weeks or months — led her to order comfortable temperatures, dimmed lights at night, and limits on CBP detention to only the time “reasonably required” to process children for release or transport.¹¹

In September 2019, Judge Gee issued a permanent injunction blocking a Trump administration effort to replace the settlement with regulations that would have allowed the government to self-license family detention facilities. She described the settlement as a “binding contract and a consent decree” and said the regulations did not implement the agreement but “intentionally subvert it.”¹²

To police day-to-day compliance, Judge Gee appointed former U.S. Attorney Andrea Sheridan Ordin as independent monitor on October 5, 2018, after the court found “persistent problems” including children held in secure, unlicensed facilities and enduring inadequate food, unsafe drinking water, freezing temperatures, and unsanitary conditions.⁷ The monitor can inspect shelters and detention centers unannounced, gather documents, interview staff and children, and file reports every 90 days recommending sanctions, though she cannot issue orders directly.¹³

The plaintiff class is represented by Peter Schey and Carlos Holguín of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, joined by the National Center for Youth Law and Children’s Rights. Together they act as “Flores counsel,” with authority to bring enforcement motions and inspect detention facilities nationwide.¹⁴¹⁵

How the Agreement Came About

The case began in 1985, when 15-year-old Jenny Lisette Flores, an unaccompanied girl who had fled El Salvador, was arrested by INS officers near San Ysidro, California, and placed in a Pasadena motel converted into a makeshift detention facility. The INS refused to release her to a cousin with legal status, insisting on a parent or legal guardian. She was subjected to regular strip searches and held without adequate medical care.¹⁶¹⁷

Attorneys at the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law and the National Center for Youth Law filed a class action challenging INS detention practices. The case reached the Supreme Court as Reno v. Flores in 1993. The Court sided with the government on the constitutional question, holding that institutional custody was permissible so long as it was “decent and humane.” Justice Scalia’s majority opinion rested partly on the assumption that INS was complying with earlier consent decree standards requiring state-licensed facilities — an assumption that became a baseline for the settlement that followed.¹⁸¹⁹ With litigation over actual conditions still pending, the parties negotiated the Flores Settlement Agreement in 1997.²⁰

Attempts to End the Agreement

The government has tried repeatedly to terminate the settlement, and the effort has succeeded only in part.

On April 30, 2024, the Biden administration published the “Unaccompanied Children Program Foundational Rule,” which sought to codify the settlement’s requirements into federal regulation, and then moved to terminate the agreement as it applied to HHS. On June 28, 2024, Judge Gee granted the motion in part. She found the rule adequately codified most protections for children in standard ORR care, but she refused to terminate the settlement for children in secure facilities, heightened supervision facilities, and out-of-network placements. She found the rule inconsistent with the settlement because it allowed placement in heightened supervision based on isolated or petty offenses and permitted such placement solely because a child was deemed ready to “step-down” from a secure facility, and because it exempted out-of-network facilities from minimum standards and monitoring.²¹²²

Judge Gee approved the rule’s alternative to state licensing in states such as Texas and Florida that had stopped licensing ORR facilities, finding that enhanced monitoring, an independent Ombuds Office, and accreditation requirements provided a reasonable substitute. She deferred ruling on plaintiffs’ counsel access, saying it “should be no different than it has been for the last 27 years.”²²

On May 22, 2025, the Trump administration’s Department of Justice filed a new motion to terminate the entire agreement, arguing that federal regulations had sufficiently incorporated its goals and citing the Supreme Court’s decision in Garland v. Aleman-Gonzalez. On August 15, 2025, Judge Gee denied the motion in a 20-page ruling, concluding that the government had failed to show “sufficiently substantial compliance” and that there had been “no meaningful change either in factual conditions or in law” since the 2019 attempt. Acknowledging some improvements, she wrote that “to suggest that the agreement should be abandoned because some progress has been made is nonsensical,” calling the improvements “direct evidence that the FSA is serving its intended purpose.”¹²³

The government appealed to the Ninth Circuit. The case, Flores v. Bondi (No. 25-820), proceeded through briefing in mid-2025. As of the most recent available docket information, no oral argument had been scheduled and no ruling had been issued.²

On January 28–29, 2026, a broad coalition filed amicus briefs supporting the settlement. Twenty state attorneys general argued the agreement is essential for ensuring children are placed in state-licensed facilities. Twenty-six U.S. Senators argued that congressional appropriations for detention capacity did not override the settlement’s requirements. The American Academy of Pediatrics and other medical organizations cited research linking detention to anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and suicide attempts in children. More than 160 immigration lawyers and law professors called the settlement a “crucial safeguard” against indefinite detention.²⁴

Compliance in 2026

The settlement is still binding, and it is also being routinely breached. As of January 2026, the Department of Homeland Security had detained more than 900 children in family detention centers beyond 20 days, with roughly 270 held longer than 40 days.¹ ICE data from December 2025 and January 2026 showed nearly 600 children detained beyond 20 days, 121 beyond 50 days, and 38 beyond 100 days.¹⁵

The South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, has drawn particular scrutiny. A report published in April 2026 by Human Rights First and RAICES documented conditions between April 2025 and February 2026, during which more than 5,600 people — including parents, toddlers, and newborns — were held at the facility. The report described “unsafe and degrading” conditions including inadequate food, water, personal hygiene, and medical care.²⁵

In March 2026, Flores counsel filed a brief responding to an ICE Juvenile Coordinator’s report that claimed Dilley was in “full compliance.” Counsel submitted declarations from detained families describing food that caused vomiting and diarrhea in children, formula mixed with tap water that gave infants persistent diarrhea, a 10-year-old with Hirschsprung’s disease who went more than a month without a bowel movement due to lack of proper care, and a two-year-old with an untreated tooth infection causing pain and fever for 23 days. Children reported panic attacks and depression. Staff, the filing says, confiscated a child’s crayons to prevent children from writing letters about conditions there.¹⁵

Judge Gee continues to oversee compliance in the district court while the Ninth Circuit weighs the government’s appeal. Unless and until that court rules otherwise, the standards set out in 1997 — safe and sanitary conditions, licensed facilities, and release within 20 days — remain the law governing every immigrant child in federal custody.

1
Immigration Policy Tracking Project. Administration Once Again Tries to Terminate the Flores Settlement Agreement
2
CourtListener. Flores v. Bondi, et al.
3
American Bar Association. FSA Addendum
4
Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law. Flores Settlement
5
National Conference of State Legislatures. Unaccompanied Minors and the Flores Settlement Agreement: What to Know
6
National Center for Youth Law. Flores v. Reno
7
Human Rights First. The Flores Settlement and Family Incarceration
8
HIAS. Flores Backgrounder
9
Administration for Children and Families. ORR Unaccompanied Children Policy
10
Administration for Children and Families. Unaccompanied Children Program Policy Guide
11
Children’s Rights. Federal Court Enforces Flores Settlement Agreement
12
Child Welfare League of America. Court Upholds Flores Protections
13
KQED. Judge Appoints Monitor to Ensure Safe Conditions for Kids in Immigration Custody
14
Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law. Litigation
15
Children’s Rights. Flores Counsel Responds to Federal Status Report
16
Oxford Centre for Criminology. The Flores Settlement
17
Harvard Human Rights Journal. From Flores to Title 42: Unaccompanied Children in Detention
18
Justia. Reno v. Flores, 507 U.S. 292
19
Cornell Law Institute. Reno v. Flores, 507 U.S. 292
20
Human Rights First. The Flores Settlement: A Brief History and Next Steps
21
Immigrant Justice. Explainer: Final Regulations on the Care of Unaccompanied Children
22
National Center for Youth Law. Order on Motion to Terminate Flores Settlement Agreement as to HHS
23
The New York Times. Migrant Children Trump Flores Settlement
24
Children’s Rights. Amicus Briefs Filed in Support of the Flores Settlement
25
Human Rights First. New Report Exposing Systemic Due Process Violations and Cruelty at Dilley ICE Family Prison