Texas detainees sue feds for release from coronavirus-plagued immigration center
A federal lawsuit demanding the release of 11 people being held at a federal immigration detention facility near Fort Worth says the detainees face sickness and death unless they are removed.
According to the lawsuit, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials sent more than 80 people, some with positive COVID-19 test results, to the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado without taking adequate safety precautions.
These immigrants were flown to Texas from two jails in New York and Pennsylvania where there were already coronavirus outbreaks, the lawsuit says.
The detainees were placed in situations where they were shackled and could not cover their mouths when they coughed. They were forced to share dining and sleeping areas with other detainees where social distancing was impossible, the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit describes several detainees who suffer from underlying medical conditions that make them particularly susceptible to contracting COVID-19 and to being adversely affected by the disease if they do contract it.
The lawsuit describes situations where the detainees were not furnished with protective masks, soap, sanitation supplies or sanitary areas.
Isolation at the center is provided for by placing detainees in segregation, or what was once called solitary confinement, the lawsuit contends. But often the detainees identified in the lawsuit described being confined in areas where they were trapped with other detainees who appeared to be ill, the lawsuit states.
Officials with ICE did not respond to a request for comment.
“Our clients at Prairieland are terrified of getting sick and dying of COVID-19,” said Fatma Marouf, one of the attorneys representing the 11 detainees. “Many of them have lived in this country for decades and have family members who are U.S. citizens. They don’t want to become an invisible statistic.”
Detainees are unable to safely social distance, have been given only one disposable mask and are living in very close quarters with other cellmates, according to the lawsuit. According to the federal government, 45 inmates at Prairieland had tested positive for COVID-19 as of Friday.
“Despite repeated warnings from public health experts, ICE refuses to implement the most basic of steps to protect people detained at Prairieland,” said Manoj Govindaiah, director of litigation at RAICES Texas, an immigration advocacy group that has joined the lawsuit.
The petition was filed Friday in federal court by the Texas A&M Immigrant Rights Clinic, RAICES and the civil rights firm of Loevy & Loevy, according to court documents.
“ICE authorities are constitutionally obligated to take common sense measures to protect the health and lives of people imprisoned in their facilities,” according to Scott Rauscher of Loevy & Loevy. “Detention cannot and should not be a death sentence — not for the detainees, not for the people who work in ICE facilities, and not for the people in surrounding communities.”
This story was originally published May 19, 2020 at 9:08 PM.
