August 18, 2026
After reviewing claims of persistent safety and sanitary failures, the court named two experts to monitor detention conditions across several facilities.
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 assigned to assist 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.