The Donald Trump administration proposed a new rule Thursday seeking to allow immigrant children to be held indefinitely while their parents are subject to legal proceedings.
The new rule by the Departments of Homeland Security Health and Human Services would lift court-imposed regulations on how long immigrant children can be kept in custody, enshrined in the Flores Agreement.
The 1997 settlement restricted the amount of time a migrant child can be held in detention to 20 days.
The new regulations are set to be published Friday in the Federal Register and would go into effect 60 days thereafter.
Children had been released with their parents under prior practice, which U.S. President Donald Trump has pejoratively called "catch and release." His administration tried to circumvent the rule earlier this year by separating the parents from their children and placing them in the care of Health and Human Services.
"Today, legal loopholes significantly hinder the Department's ability to appropriately detain and promptly remove family units that have no legal basis to remain in the country," Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said in a statement.
Health and Human Services Alex Azar separately said the new rule "would implement the Flores Settlement Agreement and our duties under the law to protect the safety and dignity of unaccompanied alien children in our custody."
The administration's new proposal to hold children along with their parents in Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities for as long as it takes to settle their case is certain to spark a legal challenge from rights groups that could go all the way to the Supreme Court.
A previous attempt by the Trump administration to undo the Flores Agreement's 20-day cap was met with legal defeat in early July.
U.S. District Court Judge Dolly Gee said in her ruling that the administration's reasoning was "tortured" and a "cynical attempt" to shift immigration enforcement duties to the judiciary.
"Defendants seek to light a match to the Flores Agreement and ask this Court to upend the parties' agreement by judicial fiat," Gee, who oversees the Flores Agreement's implementation, wrote in her decision.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which has been at the forefront of many of the legal challenges to the administration's immigration policies, slammed the new rule.
"It is sickening to see the United States government looking for ways to jail more children for longer," said Omar Jadwat, the director of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project.
"That's the complete opposite of what we should be doing — 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," he added.
