Mother arrested at LA court alongside six-year-old son with cancer sues Ice
A Honduran woman who sought asylum in the US is suing the Trump administration after immigration agents arrested her and her children, including her six-year-old son who was diagnosed with leukemia, at a Los Angeles immigration court.
The woman, identified as 'Ms Z' in the lawsuit, and her nine-year-old daughter and six-year-old son have been in custody at a Texas detention facility for several weeks following their arrest. The government has placed them in expedited removal proceedings.
Lawyers for the family say they were detained as part of the administration's 'nationwide campaign to summarily arrest law-abiding non-citizens when they attend their immigration court hearings'. Such arrests that are occurring at 'rates never before seen in the United States', according to the lawsuit filed this week. The lawsuit alleges the family is being detained in violation of their constitutional rights.
The family applied to come to the US last year after fleeting their home country, where they faced 'imminent, menacing death threats'. They followed the 'lawful process', were paroled and went to live with the woman's mother, according to court documents provided by the Texas Civil Rights Project.
The boy had been diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia at the age of three and underwent two years of successful treatment. While no more leukemia cells were found in his blood, his mother knew he would need regular monitoring and medical care and took him to multiple appointments once they settled in the US, according to the suit.
After attending a court hearing in Los Angeles last month, where their case was suddenly dismissed, federal agents dressed as civilians arrested the family 'without any prior notice or warning' as they left the courtroom.
They were not permitted to leave or make calls, the suit stated. The six-year-old, after seeing an agents gun, urinated on himself in fear and was left in the wet clothing for hours, according to the suit.
The family has been held at a detention center in Dilley, Texas, since their arrest. The six-year-old missed a medical appointment related to his diagnosis earlier this month because of the family's incarceration.
Detention has highly detrimental effects on the physical and mental health of children, potentially causing 'serious psychological trauma', and research has found that children at the Dilley facility suffer from 'inadequate medical care', according to the suit.
The six-year-old has 'lost his appetite, experienced easy bruising and occasional bone pain, and looks pale, all of which are recognized as symptoms of leukemia,' the suit states, and his mother fears he is not receiving necessary medical care. Both children cry every night.
DHS official Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement to the Guardian that the boy has received regular treatment while in custody.
'First of all, at no time during detention is a detained individual denied emergency care,' said McLaughlin, DHS assistant secretary. 'Fortunately, the minor child in question has not undergone chemotherapy in over a year, and has been seen regularly by medical personnel since arriving at the Dilley facility.'
'The implication that Ice would deny a child the medical care they need is flatly FALSE, and it is an insult to the men and women of federal law enforcement. Ice ALWAYS prioritizes the health, safety, and wellbeing of all detainees in its care.'
Lawyers are requesting the family's immediate release for medical treatment, and say that they are not a flight risk and have 'done everything the government asked of them'.
'The government is not detaining petitioners to serve its legitimate interests in protecting against danger or flight risk,' the court filing states. 'Instead, the government is detaining this family, along with countless others swept up in its courthouse arrests, for the illegitimate reason that they were easy to locate because they were where DHS told them to be to pursue humanitarian relief.'
The family is suing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), the Department of Justice (DoJ) as well as the warden of the detention center, Ice's acting director, the homeland security secretary, and the attorney general, among others.
McLaughlin said the family 'had chosen to appeal their case – which had already been thrown out by an immigration judge – and will remain in Ice custody until it is resolved'.
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