A federal judge put Trump administration officials through the wringer this week, calling them liars and ordering them to start reducing the detainee population at a notorious immigration prison devastated by the novel coronavirus pandemic by at least 50 people per day. The judge first issued a ruling in April, but the administration has fought it as more at the notorious California prison have gotten sick. On Thursday, he’d appeared to have enough of the bullshit.
U.S. District Judge Terry Hatter criticized the "direct evidence of dishonesty" on the part of administration attorneys, Law360 reports, going so far as threatening to hold them in contempt of court. “The court,” Hatter said according to Law360, “is concerned that the facts and arguments that it previously perceived to be merely inaccurate or ambiguous might have been, actually, dishonest or, at best, disingenuous." This is Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) we’re dealing with. Of course it’s lying.
Campaign ActionAdvocates of immigrants detained at the privately run Adelanto Immigration and Customs Enforcement Processing Center in California sued earlier this year seeking the release of people jailed at a site that has become a COVID-19 tinderbox due to conditions inside.
The lawsuit said those conditions included as many as eight people at a time crammed into one 8x10 cell at the GEO Group facility. “Detainees in Adelanto share toilets, sinks, and showers with others in their cells and pods, without disinfection after each use,” court documents said. “The showers are consistently dirty and infrequently sanitized,” and detainees weren’t being supplied with hand sanitizer, gloves, or masks needed to stay safe.
Hatter in April ruled detainees had to be provided with those items and that ICE had to reduce the population by May, but the government instead fought it and won a stay on the injunction. Coronavirus, 1, saving lives, 0. Not only that, ICE violated the parts of the injunction that weren’t stayed, advocates said, and stopped testing at the facility even though it got a shipment of nearly 2,000 tests. Because if you don’t test, you don’t have any positive results, duh.
The order this week doesn’t empty Adelanto completely, but it’ll hugely reduce the population from nearly 800, to 475 or less. “Judge Hatter just dismantled (almost) Adelanto,” tweeted immigration attorney Nicolette Glazer. “Starting 10-19-2020 ICE is ordered to release at least 50 immigrants per day until the targeted 475 number is accomplished. THIS IS HUGE.” Definitely, but that number should really be zero, because social distancing while in detention is impossible. According to ICE, at least 160 detainees at the facility have currently tested positive for the virus. Some immigrants there have further been forced to start hunger strikes to protest their detention amid this pandemic.
“Judge Hatter also bashed the government for failing to meet its deadlines to respond to the court,” Law360 continued, “and said that he is considering assigning a special master, paid by the government, to make sure it is providing accurate and timely information.” The judge should just go right ahead and do that, because this is the same ICE that tried to deport a number of Cameroonian asylum-seekers who alleged horrific physical abuse while in custody. To keep immigrants jailed during a pandemic when they don’t have to be jailed in the first place is also abuse.
“Eight months into the pandemic, over 700 people remain imprisoned for civil immigration violations in an over-crowded jail where basic protective measures are impossible and dozens fall ill with COVID-19 each day,” American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California senior attorney Jessica Bansal told the Palm Springs Desert Sun. “Today’s order confirms that our Constitution does not condone such basic disregard for human lives and safety.”
from Daily Kos https://ift.tt/2HdBc6O
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