Judge Orders New Oversight of Immigrant Children’s Detention

A federal judge this week found that officials at immigration detention centers in Texas and California had likely housed children and other detainees at unsafe temperatures and had denied them soap and adequate sleeping conditions.

In an order issued on Monday, Judge Dolly M. Gee of the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles said she was appointing an independent monitor and a special master — an expert blockigned to blockist her — as she tracks the government’s compliance with a 1997 legal agreement that sets basic standards of care for immigrant children in U.S. custody.

Judge Gee oversees the agreement, known as the Flores settlement, and the plaintiffs have been asking the court to step in, because of what they said was growing evidence that the government was not complying.

Under the Flores settlement, migrants who are 17 years old and younger must be expeditiously released from custody and must receive adequate meals, clean water, clothing, education and medical blockistance, among other basic needs.

But the judge found “stark” and “conflicting” differences between the government’s compliance claims and reports from immigrant detainees. In declarations, families said that children were often given only over-the-counter medicine such as Tylenol and ibuprofen in response to a variety of medical concerns.

Families also do***ented critical delays in care, according to the court filings. A 10-year-old child with a heart murmur had to wait nearly 60 days before seeing a cardiologist. Another child cried out in pain while waiting for treatment for appendicitis. A 2-year-old with diarrhea was sent to a hospital only after six days of fever and repeated visits to a medical center inside a detention facility.

The Trump administration has sought to terminate the Flores settlement, but Judge Gee rejected the first try, in 2019, and last year, she rejected another attempt. The government has appealed her decision and the case is before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

In a response to Judge Gee last month, the government argued against the need for additional oversight, arguing it was in compliance with the Flores settlement and the legal standards for appointing independent monitors had not been met.

But this week, Judge Gee found that the plaintiffs had provided enough evidence to warrant closer oversight.

For at least the next 12 months, Andrea Sheridan Ordin, a former U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, will serve as special master and Paul H. Wise, a Stanford University pediatrician and health policy expert, as independent monitor. The appointees will evaluate conditions at several facilities and will track how long authorities are holding detainees who are 17 or younger.

The court’s new oversight effort covers children held by Customs and Border Protection in its Rio Grande Valley, El Paso and San Diego sectors, and children held by Immigration and Customs Enforcement at hotels and in the South Texas Family Residential Center, a detention facility in Dilley, Texas.

At the Dilley facility, they will be looking specifically at whether ICE is providing minors appropriate access to medical care and giving detainees notice of their rights under the legal agreement. The order this week was the culmination of a series of meetings the judge has been holding since July 2025 with the parties in the case to review the plaintiffs’ concerns.

The court found that the government may have kept faulty records that mask how long children have been held, and that the plaintiffs had been able to show persistent safety and sanitary failures at the sectors now under watch.

In the Rio Grande Valley, El Paso and San Diego sectors, families and their children continued to raise complaints of “freezing temperatures” at holding cells that have colloquially become known as “hieleras” — “iceboxes” in Spanish. In the San Diego sector, detainees also submitted declarations saying lights were on day and night.

Although C.B.P. facilities are meant to be only temporary holding places, the average detention times for immigrant minors crossing the border with families exceeded the 72-hour target limit between March and June 2026. Under the settlement, children are supposed to be transferred out of C.B.P. facilities within 72 hours and out of ICE custody within roughly 20 days.

At the family detention center in Dilley, which has held, on average, around 235 children over the past year, the plaintiffs’ lawyers estimated that about 1,560 minors had been detained for longer than 20 days, based on six months of data reported to the court.

Seamus Hughes and Allison McCann contributed reporting.