California Judges Reopen ‘Flores’ Border Gate for Coyotes, Cartels, Migrants

“They’re basically saying, ‘Bring a child with you across the border and it is a get-out-of-jail card,'” said John Miano, a lawyer with the Immigration Reform Law Institute.

The December 30 decision by the judges on the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rejected a careful 2019 regulation by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which is intended to replace the 1997 Flores rules.

The Flores policy was set in 1997 by California Judge Dolly Gee in cooperation with pro-migration officials in President Bill Clinton’s administration and various pro-migration groups. The Flores court settlement enables and invites migrants to overwhelm U.S. border rules by first claiming asylum to prevent quick deportation and then using their children to get released after 20 days into U.S. workplaces.

The judges said President Donald Trump’s DHS regulation would wrongly end the 1997 Flores‘ catch and release policy:

Together, the DHS regulations regarding the release of accompanied minors and the revised definition of “licensed facility” dramatically increase the likelihood that accompanied minors will remain in government detention indefinitely, instead of being released while their immigration proceedings are pending or housed in nonsecure, licensed facilities. Effecting this change was one of the principal features of the [DHS] Final Rule. The government “strongly disagrees” with our holding in Flores [1997] that “the plain [catch and release] language of the Agreement clearly encompasses accompanied minors [with parents].”

“That’s the puzzling thing — how can a [1997 Cinton] arrangement like this be used to bind every future administration?” asked Miano. “That is nuts … it seems contrary to any democratic process.”

The judges did not bar DHS from holding migrant adults for long periods — but they also know that pro-migration Democrats and media outlets will emotionally slam the separation of children from their migrant parents after 20 days. For example, in October, President-elect Joe Biden declared:

Their kids were ripped from their arms and separated and now they cannot find over 500 of sets of those parents and those kids are alone. Nowhere to go. Nowhere to go. It’s criminal, it’s criminal.

Since his election, Biden has begun describing his pro-migration border policy as “family reunification.”

The judges’ decision allows Biden to keep the Flores gateway open during his first term — despite Trump’s regulatory closure — and use the 20-day rule to justify releasing many wage-cutting migrants into the jobs needed by blue-collar Americans. So far, very few white-collar journalists have defended the right of blue-collar Americans to their own national labor market.

Trump’s deputies did not release the DHS regulation until August 2019, 32 months after he took office. The late release — and slow judicial consideration — means that his deputies do not have time to get the Supreme Court to overturn the California judges’ veto

The judges insisted the Flores gateway has any impact on the flow of migrants through the obstacle course of dangers that lie between migrants’ homes and the jobs they want in the United States. “The crux of the government’s … argument is that an unprecedented increase in the number of minors arriving annually at U.S. borders warrants termination of the [1997] Agreement,” said the judges’ decision, released December 30. The decision continues:

According to the government, “irregular family migration” has increased by 33 times since 2013, and in 2019, more than 500,000 people traveling as families reached the southwest border.

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The government has failed to demonstrate that the recent increase in family migration has made complying with the Agreement’s [1997] release mandate for accompanied minors “substantially more onerous,” “unworkable,” or “detrimental to the public interest.”

Amid the court’s claims, many migrants have told U.S. media outlets they brought their children up to the border to exploit Judge Gee’s Flores catch-and-release gateway.