The History of the Flores Settlement
How a 1997 agreement cracked open our detention laws
By Matthew Sussis on February 11, 2019
In April 2018, the Trump administration implemented new guidelines as part of its "zero tolerance" policy toward illegal entry, in response to the rising number of illegal aliens showing up with their children at the southern border. Under these guidelines, the Justice Department prosecuted every border infiltrator for the crime of entry without inspection.
After detaining the parents, the government could either put the children in a shelter (due to legal prohibitions on keeping children in detention for over 20 days), or release the entire family into the interior of the country — "catch-and-release" — and hope that they don't simply disappear into the illegal immigrant population. The first of these two options has been decried by critics as one of "family separation".
To understand how this conundrum arose, one must learn the history of the Flores settlement agreement.
https://cis.org/Report/History-Flores-Settlement
