Ending Immigrant Family Detention: Litigation 2015

From January to July 2015, the Clinic partnered with the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, as well as other counsel, to represent a class of plaintiffs in nationwide class-action litigation regarding the rights of children in the custody of the Department of Homeland Security. Following DHS’s expanded practice of detaining immigrant families of women and children, class counsel for plaintiffs sued to enforce the 1997 settlement agreement in Flores v. Meese, which prohibited the government from detaining children in secure, unlicensed facilities. Plaintiffs also challenged inhumane conditions of detention at Customs and Border Protection facilities at or near the border. Clinic students helped draft declarations from attorneys representing family detainees. In July 2015, the district court ruled in plaintiffs’ favor. The litigation is ongoing, and the Clinic faculty is consulting on the case with plaintiffs’ counsel.