Thread: Migrants seek millions in damages for detention conditions

August 11, 2015
By Olaf Ekberg

A group of illegal aliens are now complaining about the conditions in which they’re being held, and are seeking “millions” in damages for their “psychological harm.”

Nashville, Tennessee attorney Andrew Free filed a tort claim against the Department of Homeland Security on behalf of five illegals, alleging “the detained women and their children received inadequate medical care, suffered psychological trauma and in some cases were wrongfully imprisoned,” the Star Telegram reports.

The tort claim –a precursor to a federal lawsuit — is also directed at U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE runs two family detention centers in Texas and Pennsylvania, which hold about 1,400 people.

Free contends the conditions at the centers have “fallen below the standard of care that they owe to these detainees,” who are from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.

“We expect this will be the first in a large set of filings on the mistreatment of these women and children on behalf of the government,” according to the lawyer.

But ICE disputes those claims.

Spokeswoman Gillian Christensen tells the paper the centers provide “open environment” and are “an effective and humane alternative for maintaining family unity as families go through immigration proceedings or await return to their home countries.”

The centers include play areas, educational services, medical care and legal help, according to Christensen.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration is fighting against an order by U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee that detainees be set free due to the “deplorable” conditions in which they’re being held.

Federal lawyers believe an immediate release will spur smugglers “who are known to exploit changes in immigration policy” to “lure more people to breach the Texas-Mexico border,” KVIA reports.

“Therefore, the Court’s proposed remedy — to the extent that it eliminates the Government’s ability to use expedited removal or reinstated orders of removal for families under any circumstances — could cause another notable increase in the numbers of parents choosing to cross the border with their children,” attorneys for the U.S. Justice Department argue.

http://www.theamericanmirror.com/ill...on-conditions/

Detainees In Family Detention File For $10 Million In Damage Claims

Salvadoran woman with broken fingers says medical staff refused to treat her and guards insulted her.

Immigrant women and children locked in family detention centers are seeking $10 million in damages from the Department of Homeland Security over allegations of medical neglect and other forms of mistreatment.

The five administrative claims filed Monday, which could lead to federal lawsuits, mark the latest jab against the Obama administration’s policy of detaining mothers and their children together in order to dissuade Central American

migrants to cross illegally into the United States and ask for asylum.

One of the women, Yancy Mejía, traveled with her 4-year-old son by land from El Salvador into the United States in March. She says she no longer felt safe in her home country after a gang abducted her for five days and raped her, only

releasing her when her mother paid a $4,000 ransom. She arrived in the United States with twisted fingers that had been broken during the gang’s beatings.

But at the Southern Texas Family Residential Center, a family detention center built in December in the Texas town of Dilley, she says staff refused to help treat the painful fractures and referred to her and other detainees as “f**king

migrants” who “came to invade their country.”

She says staff declined to give medical attention to her child, who vomited repeatedly and refused to eat. Instead, medical staff told her to give the child water because he was dehydrated. After several days, a group of lawyers helped press the

center to send her son to a nearby hospital, where he was diagnosed with a virus that had caused an ear infection. He was treated there with antibiotics for five days, she said.

“It was horrible living in that place,” Mejía, who was allowed to leave the Dilley detention center nine days ago with an ankle monitor while pursuing her asylum claim, told The Huffington Post. “I spent so much time suffering in that

prison. We came to this country looking for help. It’s an injustice that they lock us up for months.”

Another woman who filed a complaint, Celina Gutiérrez Cruz, told The Huffington Post last month that her child vomited blood repeatedly for a week before guards at the Dilley detention center finally took her to an off-site medical facility to

receive treatment. Prior to that, medical staff told Gutiérrez Cruz to have her 6-year-old daughter drink water.

As with many other asylum seekers locked in family detention, ICE has refused to allow Gutiérrez Cruz or her daughter leave the facility, even though she passed a “reasonable fear” interview with an asylum officer -- the first step toward

establishing a “withholding of removal” claim, which is similar to asylum but provides fewer protections and requires a higher level of scrutiny.

Gutiérrez Cruz, 22, says she fled Honduras after a gang tried to force her to traffic drugs and serve as a “concubine.” Members of the gang beat her and then threatened to kill her daughter if she refused, she says. A psychological evaluation

found that both she and her daughter suffer from PTSD.

“They said they would take my daughter away from me and kill her,” Gutiérrez told HuffPost by phone last month from detention. “That’s why I took the decision to come here. But I didn’t know that I would be locked up for so long. ... Why
don’t they let us out?”

Treatment by guards at the family detention centers caused the detainees to suffer damages including “physical pain and suffering,” as well as “mental and emotional pain and anguish,” according to the filing.

“Each one of these five women has stepped forward to bear witness to the reality of what’s happening in the government’s refugee family internment camps," Andrew Free, who represents detainees locked in family detention as part of the

CARA Pro Bono Project, told HuffPost. "Each one of these five women and their children have been held hostage to a government narrative that is deliberately misleading. The government wants the courts and the general public to believe

that these people are economic migrants who come here seeking work and a better life. … But the overwhelming majority of the women and children that are coming here are looking only for the safety and refuge of

longstanding asylum laws, and the government does not want to allow them to have access to it."

A spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement said ICE does not comment on pending litigation, but defended the agency’s general handling of mothers and children locked in its detention centers.

“U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) takes very seriously the health, safety and welfare of those in our care," the statement said. "The agency is committed to ensuring that individuals housed in our family residential centers

receive timely and appropriate medical health care. ICE’s family residential standards are designed to provide onsite health care and remote specialized services as needed for all residents."

The Obama administration largely abandoned family detention in 2009 in the face of continued protests. But following an influx of some 68,000 family units last year -- the vast majority of them from the poverty- and violence-plagued

Central American countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras -- the administration expanded family detention once more.

Federal officials added bed space for families at the Karnes County Residential Center in Texas, and constructed an entirely new one at Dilley. Both family detention centers are run as for-profit enterprises. Corrections Corporation of

America, the country’s largest private prison contractor, runs the Dilley detention center, while GEO Group, the second-largest contractor, runs the Karnes detention center.

Both centers have generally defended their handling of detainees in family detention, while referring more specific questions to ICE.

A federal judge ruled last month that detaining mothers with their children violates the 1997 Flores Settlement, which requires authorities to detain undocumented children in the least restrictive environment possible and to generally favor a

policy of releasing them. The government asked the judge last week to reconsider the ruling, arguing that it had improved its family detention policies but still wanted to detain migrant families for periods of roughly three weeks to screen their asylum claims.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/...ef=mostpopular

Not surprising to see a bunch of ambulance chasing lawyers out for buck. I wonder what proof these illegals are providing to substantiate their claims of abuse in their homeland? Why didn't the lady with the twisted finger have it fixed in her own country? After all, she claims her mother paid $4,000 for her release from a criminal gang.

Give each of them $1.25 and a bus ride back to their home country.

by Caroline May
12 Aug 2015
2,022 comments

Illegal immigrants are suing the U.S. government for what they say was psychological and physical harm due to their detention, according to an Associated Press report.

The five illegal immigrants, all hailing from Guatemala, Honduras, or El Salvador, are seeking millions of dollars in damages and claim they received poor medical care and suffered psychologically from being detained.

Andrew Free, the immigration lawyer representing the plaintiffs, told the AP that the government’s use of family detention violates their rights and that the government fails to provide the “standard of care that they owe to these detainees.”

“We expect this will be the first in a large set of filings on the mistreatment of these women and children on behalf of the government,” Free told the AP.

While Immigration and Customs Enforcement — an agency named in the suit that oversees detention centers — would not comment on pending litigation, spokeswoman Gillian Christensen told the AP that the detention centers are an “open environment” that provide access to play areas, educational services, medical care, and legal help.

She noted that such facilities are “an effective and humane alternative for maintaining family unity as families go through immigration proceedings or await return to their home countries.”

To be sure, more than 84 percent of family units released on alternative to detention have absconded, simply skipping their immigration hearings.

According to News Radio 1200 WOAI, the illegal immigrants are seeking $10 million in damages.

The suit follows a recent federal judge’s ruling ordering the release of currently detained illegal immigrant family units and calls from Democratic lawmakers to end the practice of family detention. Last week the Obama administration argued against the judge’s ruling pointing out that simply releasing new illegal immigrants into the interior could inspire more illegal immigration.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-governm...ver-detention/

You have to get them out of here. Prison is no picnic. Stuff happens. We need to take the money we're spending on their detention and use it to pay for court proceedings to convict them of a felony for being here, a rapid process no papers, you're convicted and out deal, and shoot them right back out to where they came from.

Americans don't want to pay to detain illegals, but we'll gladly pay state courts to quickly convict them of felonies for being here illegally or without papers which is also a felony, bus them out of here, and the faster the better. The reason all legal immigrants are required to carry their immigration cards or papers with them is so all this mess can be avoided in determining whether they're here legally or not. No papers, felony and you're on the next bus, boat or plane out of here in 48 hours.

Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

Give each of them $1.25 and a bus ride back to their home country.

Absolutely! That's it in a nutshell.

Originally Posted by Jean

A group of illegal aliens are now complaining about the conditions in which they’re being held, and are seeking “millions” in damages for their “psychological harm.”

Nashville, Tennessee attorney Andrew Free filed a tort claim against the Department of Homeland Security on behalf of five illegals, alleging “the detained women and their children received inadequate medical care, suffered psychological trauma and in some cases were wrongfully imprisoned,” the Star Telegram reports.

Gotta love this one! If somebody breaks into your house and the refrigerator isn't well stocked, he can sue you!!
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