PHOENIX — Immigrant rights groups are asking a federal judge to force Border Patrol to end the "inhumane and punitive conditions" they say many apprehended face at Arizona facilities.
The legal papers filed in U.S. District Court name three individuals — one man living in Tucson and two unidentified women — who attorneys say were denied food, adequate clothing and sleep. But Mary Kenney, an attorney with the American Immigration Council, said what they experienced is not unique.
She said a majority of the more than 72,000 people detained in the Tucson sector in a six-month period in 2013 — a "representative sample" the lawyers sought through public records requests — experienced the same conditions. And while the agency's own guidelines say holding cells should be used for no more than 12 hours, about 80 percent were held for at least twice that long, a third held for 48 hours and almost 8,000 locked up for three days or more, all in horrible conditions.
"They have been packed into overcrowded and filthy holding cells with the lights glaring day and night; stripped of outer layers of clothing and forced to suffer in brutally cold temperatures; deprived of beds, bedding and sleep; denied adequate food, water, medicine and medical care," the lawsuit states. It also claims a lack of "basic sanitation and hygiene items" like soap, toilet paper and sanitary napkins.
And those conditions, the attorneys say, exist in all of the short-term detention facilities that Border Patrol operates in the Tucson sector — all conditions challengers say Border Patrol is aware of but has ignored.
"Even those things that are easy to be fixed have not happened yet," said Nora Preciado of the National Immigration Law Center. That, she said, leaves legal action as the only remedy.
Attorney James Lyall of the American Civil Liberties Union said the conditions are so bad that, unlike some other lawsuits against the agency, challengers here have decided not to seek financial relief.
"To my knowledge this is the first case of its kind in that it seeks a court order to fundamentally reform Border Patrol's notorious detention facilities," he said.
There was no immediate response from officials at the Border Patrol's Tucson sector to the lawsuit.
Lyall said the problem starts with the fact that the Border Patrol, unlike Immigration and Customs Enforcement, does not have facilities designed to hold people for any length of time.
The lawsuit says none of those detained had access to a bed while confined.
"The vast majority of former detainees — including women detained with children — were forced to spend the night on a cold cement floor or a hard bench with no mattress and no bedding," the lawsuit states.
But there's more.
Those detained lose all but one layer of clothing before being packed into holding cells with "extremely cold temperatures."
"Border Patrol fails to adhere to its own inadequate policies, breaking its own rules as it packs men, women and children into these filthy, freezing facilities," said Preciado. "From the moment these people are apprehended they are treated in a way that can only be described as subhuman."
