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Judge Dolly M. Gee of the Central District of California asked late Friday that an independent monitor, whom she appointed last year, ensure that conditions in detention centers are promptly addressed.
She set a deadline of July 12 for the government to report on what it has accomplished “post haste” to remedy them.
“We are hoping we can act expeditiously to resolve the conditions for children in Border Patrol custody,” said Holly Cooper, part of a team of lawyers who asked the federal court to intervene.
The lawyers’ reports on conditions at a Border Patrol facility in Clint, Texas — where they said children were unable to bathe, were living in filthy clothes and diapers and were often hungry — prompted a public outcry and a new motion asking the court to force the government to move more aggressively to improve accommodations along the border for the thousands of migrants arriving from Central America.
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Monitors from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General detailed other serious problems with overcrowding at Customs and Border Protection facilities in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley.
The new order stopped short of directly ordering the government to take action but referred the issue to the monitor to take action for the “prompt remediation” of conditions at the facilities, included the retention of an independent public health expert.
Government officials have argued that they have responded as best they can to an unexpectedly large surge of new arrivals on the southern border. They disputed the reports from lawyers who visited migrant children at Clint, and said detainees were in fact being held in decent conditions with sufficient food.
In her order, the judge said that the court had detailed previous violations by the government of a 1997 consent decree, called the Flores settlement agreement, which established standards for the care of migrant children in its custody.
Lawyers had filed a request for a temporary restraining order Thursday, saying that the government had run afoul of Flores standards.