COVID-19 Lawsuits & Civil Rights Complaints
Our efforts to track ICE’s inadequate and dangerous response to COVID-19 also has helped us support lawsuits and file civil rights complaints
Protesters from Freedom for Immigrants, IC4IJ, Never Again Action - Los Angeles, ACLU So Cal, and others attend a #FreeThemAll protest at the Adelanto Detention Center.
TOXIC Chemical Use
Freedom for Immigrants filed two federal civil rights complaints against ICE and GEO Group for the illegal use of toxic chemicals at the Adelanto Detention Facility (California) and the Glades County Detention Center (Florida).
Read our complaint filed with Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice (IC4IJ) against Adelanto.
Read our complaint filed with Friends of Miami-Dade Detainees against Glades.
““The guards have started spraying this chemical everywhere, all over everything, all the time. It causes a terrible reaction on our skin. [...] They are treating us like animals””
Officers were spraying HDQ Neutral every 15-30 minutes throughout housing units. The chemicals were coming into contact with individuals’ eyes, noses, mouths, skin, clothing, bedding, food and drinking water. People were experiencing nose bleeds and extreme difficulty in breathing.
Result of our Complaints: We engaged Congressional representatives who sent ICE a letter demanding an end to the use of this chemical. And we partnered with Change.org on an accompanying petition signed by over 1.5 million people. The company that makes HDQ Neutral, Spartan Chemical Company, released a public statement decrying the use of its chemical in immigration detention. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) launched an investigation, and a federal judge in Hernandez Roman v. Wolf ordered ICE to “immediately stop” using HDQ Neutral.
Violence & racism againt black immigrants
Freedom for Immigrants and our partners filed a federal complaint against the Pine Prairie ICE Processing Center (Louisiana), detailing how prison officials used unnecessary lethal force to place Black immigrants in chokeholds and threaten them with solitary confinement at gunpoint. Read more here.
Freedom for Immigrants and the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a federal multi-individual complaint against the Adams County Correctional Center in Natchez, Mississippi, detailing how ICE officers coerced and tortured eight Cameroonian men into signing stipulated orders of removal. Read more here.
medical abuse during pandemic
In our continued effort to track instances of medical abuse and neglect in ICE prisons, Freedom for Immigrants filed a federal complaint and medical advocacy petition on behalf of a man detained at Caroline Detention Facility (Virginia), who has systematically been denied both his mental health medication as well as access to a dentist for ongoing tooth issues. Read the complaint here.
Freedom for Immigrants testified against ICE in Aganan v. Rodriguez, presenting the personal stories of immigrants in detention to the court. As dangerous, unsanitary conditions and protocols have caused people at the Elizabeth Detention Center (New Jersey) to suffer from COVID-19, four people at imminent risk of serious illness and death from the virus filed a class-action lawsuit on May 15, 2020 to bar ICE from admitting new people into the facility and to require the immediate release of all immigrants locked up in EDC.