Lawyers: Crisis warrants ICE center releases
Civil rights lawyers are seeking federal class action status for all medically compromised detainees at the Montgomery County ICE detention center after the number of cases at the facility increased.
The suit on behalf of a handful of detainees could be expanded to include four additional detainees at the Montgomery Processing Center in Conroe, which houses about 800 people. In addition, lawyers from Texas and national branches of the ACLU and the firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP requested Wednesday that U.S. District Judge Keith P. Ellison treat the case as a class action and release all detainees who are vulnerable to serious illness and death if exposed to COVID-19.
The lawsuit frames the situation as a humanitarian crisis where vulnerable detainees are housed in “extremely close quarters,” placing them at enormous risk. The Constitution’s due process clause forbids placing people in the path of a potentially lethal virus with no known cure, it says. The lawyers are seeking to represent everyone at the facility who is in imminent danger of contracting the virus — those 50 and older as well as those with an underlying medical condition identified in CDC guidelines.
“No one who is vulnerable to serious illness or death if they contract COVID-19 should be forced to remain in unsafe detention conditions,” said Kate Huddleston, attorney for the ACLU of Texas. “The release of all vulnerable individuals who are facing a mortal fate in detention is urgently necessary.”
An ICE official declined to comment on the pending legal matter but noted that the government had “taken extensive precautions” to limit the spread of the disease, conferring with medical professionals, disease control specialists, detention experts and field operators. Nationally, nearly 700 people have been released from ICE facilities after qualifying as high risk for severe illness if they contracted COVID-19, according to the ICE website.
Given the challenge many facilities face in following public health guidelines for addressing the pandemic, such as social distancing and increased hygiene, the judge is expected to move swiftly on the request.
The newly represented detainees in the suit are a 58-year-old Venezuelan woman with one kidney and high blood pressure, a 41-year-old man from Zimbabwe and 58-year-old woman from China who both have severe hypertension and a 41-year-old Cuban woman with a heart obstruction and high blood pressure.
Ellison previously ordered Georgina Rojas to be released because of the near impossibility the facility could adhere to hygiene and social distancing measures necessary to protect the 28-year-old native of Guatemala, who had an elevated risk due to obesity. Two others involved in the initial lawsuit left the facility prior to Ellison’s ruling on Rojas. The judge denied expedited release to a fourth person due to a recent history of domestic violence and prior violations of orders not to contact relatives.
ICE’s official website about COVID-19 says three people being held at the facility have tested positive for the disease. A spokesman for Geo Group, which contracts at the facility, previously said three employees had tested positive.