Chinese American judge rules against indefinite detention of immigrant children

NAPABA

JUDGE DOLLY GEE

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE attorneys didn't know what hit them when the diminutive judge resolutely rejected the Trump administration’s efforts to detain immigrant families in long-term facilities.

At first glance, one wouldn't think the diminutive and bespectacled Chinese American woman, Judge Dolly Gee could wield such power over the assembled team of lawyers from the DOJ, who trying to undo the 1997 Flores agreement limiting the detention time for children.

On Monday (July 9) Gee described the government’s request as a “cynical attempt” to foist responsibility on her for the president’s “ill-considered” action and Congress’ failure to address the issue for over 20 years. She said it was “procedurally improper and wholly without merit.” 

Under the Flores settlement agreement, migrant families are only allowed to be detained for 20 days while they await trial, before they must be released. The alternatives to this option are family separation or releasing the family together. The Trump administration is pushing to alter the ruling so that families can remain in custody together, but for an indefinite period of time longer than the 20 days.

Defendants seek to overturn the Flores Agreement and asked Gee to upend the parties’ agreement by judicial fiat, wrote Gee, an appointee of President Barack Obama. "It is apparent that Defendants’ Application is a cynical attempt...to shift responsibility to the Judiciary for over 20 years of Congressional inaction and ill-considered Executive action that have led to the current stalemate.

While Gee‘s order allows for parents to agree to be detained with their children, she emphasizes in the ruling that an indefinite placement of a child in an unlicensed detention facility “would constitute a fundamental and material breach“ of the Flores agreement.

Since the Trump-initiated zero-tolerance policy towards asylum seekers that started in April, government attorneys been hammered for the emotional issue of separating children from their parents, Trump's executive order negating that policy and have been trying to navigate between Gee's ruling and that of San Diego judge who gave until July 26 before all detained children be reunited with their families.

The government asserted in its Flores filing that the San Diego ruling would necessitate longer-term detention of children, since that would be the only way to both reunite them with their parents and keep the parents incarcerated during their immigration proceedings.

Gee rejected that argument.

“Defendants advance a tortured interpretation of the Flores Agreement in an attempt to show that the … injunction permits them to suspend the Flores release and licensure provisions,” she wrote.

Gee said she was often underestimated early in her career because she looked much younger than she was and stood only 4-foot-11 (150 centimeters).

As a daughter of immigrants herself, Gee has spent her career advocating for the underdog, 

Gee comes from a family that has directly experienced the effects of immigration restriction. In an interview with the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association (NAPABA), she explained that her family has a long history with moving to America. Her great-great-grandfather immigrated to the United States to work on the Trans-Continental Railroad in the 1800's, but was later forced to return to China as a result of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. Decades later, her father moved to America, learned English at the age of 15, and enrolled in the United States Navy to fight in World War II.

Gee joked that her mother was her first pro bono client because she had to translate for her at medical appointments and help her apply for jobs as a seamstress when she was just a girl.

“She in many ways inspired my desire to go to law school,” Gee said in a video produced by NAPABA. “I saw firsthand the difficulties she encountered as a non-English speaker and also as a garment worker. And I saw many of the abuses that take place in the workplace, and I decided at a fairly early age that I wanted to do some type of work that would address some of the inequities I saw as a child."

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