Border Patrol detains adults with no end — until sued

HOUSTON—In early June, twin brothers from Guatemala let their sister in California know they were about to cross the U.S.-Mexico border. Then they vanished for almost a month.

She couldn' t find them in online databases and the local Guatemalan consulate had no information. She f eared they had been kidnapped or killed.

It took three weeks to find them: inside jam-packed U.S. Border Patrol cells in South Texas, with no access to phones or lawyers. One of them was inside the fencedin pens that Vice President Mike Pence visited in July. Only after the lawyers sued were both brothers transferred out.

It's a pattern that immigration lawyers say has repeated itself for several weeks: Adults are detained in packed Border Patrol cells —malnourished, poorly treated and incommunicado — only to be moved within hours once the government is sued on their behalf.

One group of lawyers has filed lawsuit son behalf of the spouses, siblings and relatives of 18 migrants — all of whom were removed from their cells almost immediately.

The lawyers believe the government is trying to avoid a federal judge issuing a sweeping order that would require the release of potentially thousands of people detained by t he Border Patrol or changes to improve the conditions in cells that government inspectors and advocates have said are squalid.

“They know they' re wrong and the court's certainly going to come down on them because of the conditions ,” said Thelma Garcia, a South Texas attorney. “It's a losing battle for them in that regard.”

U.S. Customs and Border Protection declined to answer questions about the brothers' cases or others due to the pending litigation.

Under its own guidelines, the Border Patrol has 72 hours to detain adults before turning them over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE facilities have phones and places for legal visits, and detainees in its system can be found with an online search.