The Reality of Current US Immigration Policy 43 migrant exclusion, represented by government lawyers and their agents. As Schrag shows, government actors have attempted to keep publicity and legal representatives at arm’s length from asylum seekers in desperate need of lawyers by siting migration detention facilities in remote locations. But immigrant rights advocates have vigorously countered, organizing round-the-clock schedules to ensure pro bono client representation and track detention conditions. The book describes government officials purposely moving child migrants to undisclosed new locations just before their hearings without informing appointed lawyers to undercut the possibility of legal representation. But it also recounts determined counter-moves, such as congressional interns surreptitiously videoing conditions in detention facilities to publicize them. The message is that defending non-citizens’ basic rights to humane treatment requires much more than recitation of constitutional principle – extraordinary dedication and ingenuity have been the bedrock of moves to counter the administration’s rollback of basic legal obligations. As of this writing, the administration has applied for a court order to reverse the Flores settlement that governs the terms of child migrant detention. Flores prohibits the incarceration of migrant children for more than twenty days, irrespective of whether or not they are with their parents. It also requires that migrant children in state custody be held in certified facilities, specifically licensed to provide appropriate care.33 If the government is successful in reversing Flores, it will be able to indefinitely detain migrant children with their families. The fact that family detention space is being expanded to accommodate 20,000 children is ominous. It remains to be seen whether the courts and American public will tolerate this cruel policy shift any more than they did its predecessor, family separation. Externalizing Humanitarian Responsibility Apart from the contested litigation centered on the Flores settlement, the Trump administration is pursuing additional exclusion and deterrent strategies, all of which violate migrant children’s rights to protection and safety, and all of them under legal challenge. The common denominator for these policies is externalization – a process by which the United States exploits its economic and political heft to dislodge its humanitarian obligations onto its much poorer and more unstable neighbors. Ferocious violence in Central America shows no signs of abating. Homicide rates in the Central Triangle remain the highest in the world – 62 homicides per 100,000 people in El Salvador (#1), 42 per 100,000 in Honduras (#5), and 26 per 100,000 in 33 For a detailed account of the Flores settlement and its changing provisions, see Schrag, Baby Jails. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108914994 Published online by Cambridge University Press