Michael Karlis
Texas Guard personnel involved in Operation Lone Star monitor the Rio Grande from behind a barrier of razor wire installed by the state.
The suit, filed Monday on behalf of four Mexican migrants, maintains the men were held in prison for up to six weeks after they should have been released. The individuals were kept locked up after charges against three of them were dropped and the fourth pled guilty, according to allegations in the filing.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, the Texas Fair Defense Project and the Covington & Burling law firm seek monetary damages for the plaintiffs, whom they argue were deprived of due process. Some of the men also were separated from their families during their incarceration, the suit alleges.
The petition names the sheriffs for Kinney and Val Verde counties and the wardens of the Texas prison system's Briscoe and Segovia units for their alleged parts in detaining the men and violating their civil rights.
“The government cannot just grab whoever they want off the street and lock them in cages as long as they feel like it,” Texas Fair Defense Project Managing Attorney for Litigation Camilla Hsu said in a statement. “To put it plainly, what happened here was that the legal process said there was no reason for our clients to be in jail, but instead of letting them go, the Defendants in this case illegally jailed them, with no authority whatsoever, for weeks. Abuses like this are horrifying, but sadly unsurprising, in the sham criminal legal system of Operation Lone Star."
While the suit doesn't name the state of Texas or Abbott as defendants, it does call out the Republican governor for establishing a "catch and jail" policy designed to delay migrants from presenting asylum claims to federal officials. The state has so far spent $4.4 billion Abbott's Operation Lone Star crackdown, which had deployed state law enforcement personnel to arrest migrants on minor charges.
“In its design and execution, ‘catch and jail’ metes out incarceration; due process is at most an afterthought,” the petition states. “Foreseeably, if not intentionally, the scheme has violated the human and civil rights of hundreds, if not thousands, of people.”
The suit comes as a federal court hears testimony Tuesday on whether Abbott, a Republican, violated federal law by installing buoys equipped with blades across part of the Rio Grande River to deter border crossers. The Justice Department sued the state in July over the barrier, which federal officials warned for months violated both U.S. law governing the river's use and treaties with Mexico.
Subscribe to SA Current newsletters.
Follow us: Apple News | Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter| Or sign up for our RSS Feed
