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McALLEN: A federal judge on Friday will hear a Trump administration request to end a nearly three-decade-old policy on ensuring safe conditions for immigrant children held in federal custody.
US District Judge Dolly Gee in Los Angeles will hold a hearing to consider dissolving a policy that limits how long Customs and Border Protection can hold immigrant children and that requires them to be kept in safe and sanitary conditions. The policy also allows third-party inspections of CBP facilities that hold immigrant children to ensure compliance.
Advocates for immigrant children have asked the judge to keep the protections and oversight in place and have submitted firsthand accounts from immigrants in family detention who described adults fighting children for clean water, despondent toddlers and a child with swollen feet who was denied a medical exam.
In its motion, President Donald Trump’s administration said the government has made substantial changes since the Flores agreement was formalized in 1997. The government said it has created standards and policies governing the custody of immigrant children that conform to legislation and the agreement.
Conditions for immigrant children who enter the US without a parent “have substantially improved from those that precipitated this suit four decades ago,” the government wrote in its motion.
The agreement, named for a teenage plaintiff, governs the conditions for all immigrant children in US custody, including those traveling alone or with their parents. It also limits how long CBP can detain child immigrants to 72 hours. The US Department of Health and Human Services then takes custody of the children.
The Biden administration successfully pushed to partially end the agreement last year. Gee ruled that special court supervision may end when HHS takes custody, but she carved out exceptions for certain types of facilities for children with more acute needs.
Advocates for the children say the government is holding children beyond the time limits set out in the agreement. In March and April, CPB reported that it had 213 children in custody for more than 72 hours and that 14 children, including toddlers, were held for over 20 days in April. As part of their court filings, they included testimony from several families who were held in family detention centers in Texas.
If the judge terminates the settlement, the detention centers would be closed to third-party inspections.
The federal government is looking to expand its immigration detention space, including by building more centers like one in Florida dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” where a lawsuit alleges detainees’ constitutional rights are being violated.

SAINT-LAURENT-DE-LA-CABRERISSE, France: France’s biggest wildfire in decades will burn for several more days even though it has been brought under control, authorities said Friday as hundreds of firefighters kept up a battle against the flames.
The giant blaze in the southern department of Aude has burned through more than 17,000 hectares  of land — an area bigger than Paris, killing one person, injuring 13 and destroying dozens of homes.
About 2,000 firefighters are still on duty around the blaze which was declared under control on Thursday night.
The fire will not be “declared extinguished for several days,” said Christian Pouget, the prefect for Aude. “There is still a lot of work to be done.”
Authorities have banned access to the forests that were devastated by the fire until at least Sunday.
They said that roads in the zone were too dangerous because of fallen electricity lines and other hazards.
Pouget said that about 2,000 people forced to flee the flames had still not been allowed back to their homes.
Hundreds of people are sleeping in school gyms and village halls across the region.
The fire is the biggest in France’s Mediterranean region for at least 50 years, according to government monitors. The southern region suffers more than others from wildfires.
At its most intense, the flames were going through around 1,000 hectares of land per hour, according to authorities in the nearby city of Narbonne.
Two days of strong and changing winds made the blaze difficult to predict.
A 65-year-old woman, who had refused to evacuate, was found dead in her scorched house, while 13 people were injured, 11 of them firefighters.
The wildfire is a “catastrophe on an unprecedented scale,” Prime Minister Francois Bayrou said Wednesday during a visit to the affected region.
“What is happening today is linked to global warming and linked to drought,” Bayrou said.
Environment minister Agnes Pannier-Runacher wrote on X Thursday that the fire was the largest in France since 1949.
The country has already seen around 9,000 wildfires this summer, mainly close to its Mediterranean coast.
The Aude department in particular has recorded an increase in areas burned in recent years, aggravated by low rainfall and the uprooting of vineyards, which used to help slow down the advance of fires.
In Saint-Laurent-de-la-Cabrerisse, the village hardest hit by the fire, thick smoke rose Thursday from the pine hills overlooking the vineyards where dry grass was still burning.
With Europe facing new August heatwaves, many areas are on alert for wildfires. Portugal on Thursday extended emergency measures because of the heightened risk of fires.
Near the Spanish town of Tarifa, fire crews secured areas near hotels and other tourist accommodations after controlling a major blaze that also destroyed hundreds of hectares.
Antonio Sanz, interior minister for Andalusia’s regional government, said on X that “the return of all evacuated people” had been authorized after the fire was “stabilized.”
Spanish broadcaster TVE reported that the fire started in a camper van at a beach campsite, and spread quickly in strong winds.
About 1,550 people and 5,500 vehicles were evacuated from camps, hotels and homes, Sanz said.
Spain is experiencing a heatwave with temperatures nearing 40C in many regions, and officials reported 1,060 excess deaths in July that could be attributed to intense heat.
Climate experts say that global warming is driving longer, more intense and more frequent heatwaves around the world, making for more favorable forest fire conditions.