US border patrol is responsible for safety of children in migrant camps, judge says

Judge rules children in makeshift camps along US-Mexico border are in custody of government and subject to treatment standards

Children who wait in makeshift migrant camps along the US-Mexico border for border patrol to process them are in the agency’s custody and are subject to a longstanding court-supervised agreement that set standards for their treatment, a judge ruled.

The issue of when the children are officially in border patrol custody is particularly important because of the 1997 court settlement on how migrant children in US government custody must be treated. Those standards include a time limit on how long the children can be held and services such as toilets, sinks and temperature controls.

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