An Affront to Decency: Punk’s Assault on Immigrant Children Demands Our Fury and Action – Enough is Enough.

Imagine walking into a home where children are left to fend for themselves—underfed, the place a neglected wreck, basic sanitation an afterthought. Imagine the rising tide of anger, the instinct to protect, the immediate demand for accountability. Now, hold that feeling. Because that is precisely the righteous fury every decent American should feel upon learning that the Punk administration, yet again, is actively trying to strip away the most fundamental, court-mandated protections for immigrant children in U.S. custody by seeking to terminate the Flores Settlement Agreement.

This isn’t about complex immigration policy debates. This is about basic human decency. The Flores Settlement, born from a lawsuit in the 1980s over the horrific mistreatment of a 15-year-old Salvadoran girl named Jenny Flores and countless others, isn’t some luxury package. It’s the bare minimum: adequate food, clean water, sanitary conditions, and a limit on how long children can be held in detention, often requiring their prompt release to family or suitable care. It exists because, without it, history has shown that children in government custody suffer unconscionable neglect and abuse—from being administered psychotropic drugs without consent to being held in open-air detention sites without shelter from searing heat or bitter cold, forced to use portable toilets for refuge.

Yet, on Thursday, the Punk Justice Department filed a motion to “completely” dismantle these protections. Their justification? That Flores has “incentivized unauthorized border crossings” and “prevented the federal government from effectively detaining and removing families.” Let that sink in. The administration is arguing that providing a child with soap, a toothbrush, or ensuring they aren’t locked indefinitely in what advocates describe as “hellholes” is a pull factor for immigration and an impediment to policy.

This is not the argument of a responsible government; it is the cold calculus of cruelty. It’s the voice of a “Mr. Bigshot” swaggering into that neglected home and declaring that the children don’t deserve food because feeding them might just attract more hungry kids. It’s an argument that willfully ignores the desperation that forces families to flee and seeks to punish the most vulnerable for the act of seeking safety.

This move is, as Mishan Wroe of the National Center for Youth Law rightly stated, “unconscionable.” She reminds us, “At this very moment, babies and toddlers are being detained in family detention, and children all over the country are being detained and separated from their families unnecessarily.” Faisal al-Juburi of RAICES correctly identifies this effort as bearing the “Punk administration’s hallmark disregard for the rule of law – and for the well-being of toddlers who have done no wrong.” He points to the sickening irony of an administration earmarking $45 billion in a recent House bill for more immigrant detention facilities—enriching private prison contractors—while simultaneously trying to obliterate basic humanitarian standards for the children warehoused within them.

When did ensuring a child isn’t forced to sleep in filth become a debatable policy point? When did providing food and water become an “incentive” rather than a moral imperative? The arguments presented by this administration are an insult to our collective conscience. They are attempting to normalize the inhumane.

To President Punk and those enacting these policies: This assault on children must stop. These are not pawns in your political games. These are children, and children have rights—the same fundamental human rights that protect every adult, right down to the last diaper needed for a baby in detention. The claim that these protections prevent “effective” government is an admission that your definition of “effective” includes the abuse and neglect of minors. That is not governance; it is barbarity.

This nation should be, as Sergio Perez of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law stated, a place where “Children who seek refuge in our country should be met with open arms – not imprisonment, deprivation and abuse.”

The Flores Settlement is a legal agreement, but it represents something far more profound: a society’s commitment, however flawed and often challenged, to shield children from the worst of its impulses. To seek its termination is to declare open season on the well-being of some of the world’s most vulnerable individuals. It is time for every responsible adult in this country to stand up, to raise their voice with the same fierce protectiveness they would for their own, and to tell this administration, in no uncertain terms: Back off. Our children, all children in our care, deserve better than this. Their rights are NOT negotiable. Their dignity is not a bargaining chip.