Professor Cooper talks to Mother Jones about lawsuit filed on behalf of migrant children

Professor Holly Cooper, co-director of the Immigration Law Clinic, told Mother Jones that migrant children are being held in juvenile detention facilities in violation of the Fifth Amendment and the Flores settlement, a 1997 federal court decision that limits detention of immigrant children.

Some of those children are being held without cause, and others have been beaten or injected with drugs against their will, a lawsuit filed in federal court by the Immigration Law Clinic and other counsel alleges.

The Office of Refugee Resettlement also is failing to involve the children or their parents or attorneys in mandated reviews of the children’s detainment in juvenile hall after 30 days, Cooper told Mother Jones.

Holly Cooper ’98, co-director of the Immigration Law Clinic, has extensive litigation experience defending the rights of immigrants and is a nationally recognized expert on immigration detention issues and on the immigration consequences of criminal convictions.