But the larger problem, says Amnesty, is that no child should ever be held in conditions of mass detention. According to 1997 Flores Settlement agreement governing the detention, release and treatment of all migrant children, unaccompanied children, and particularly children at the end of perilous journeys, should be placed in the least restrictive setting possible. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Mayor Pete Buttigieg, speaks outside the Homestead detention center, along with several other Democratic presidential candidates. Under Flores, unaccompanied children must be moved to state-licensed shelters “as expeditiously as possible” – within 20 days if possible, the report says. “The prolonged and indefinite detention of children was a crisis of the government’s own making,” she claims.

Source: The Guardian July 18, 2019 00:00 UTC