Migrants unlawfully detained by Greg Abbott sue in federal court, seek $5 million in damages

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Right-wing Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s taxpayer-funded border stunt that has illegally detained asylum-seekers for weeks and months at a time with no official charges is facing its first legal challenge at the federal level. While migrants targeted under Abbott’s racist Operation Lone Star scheme have previously sued at the state level, a lawsuit filed this week “appears to be the first time attorneys are opposing it in federal court,” The Texas Tribune reports. Plaintiffs targeted by Abbott are also seeking $5 million in damages.

“Under the guise of state criminal trespass law but with the explicit, stated goal of punishing migrants based on their immigration status, Texas officials are targeting migrants,” the lawsuit states. “Hundreds of those arrested have waited in jail for weeks or months without a lawyer, or without charges, or without bond, or without a legitimate detention hold or without a court date.”

Advocates have been ringing the alarm about Abbott violating state law by jailing migrants without any formal changes since at least the fall. Many of those illegally detained were subsequently released by a court, where legal advocates had challenged “widespread violations of state law and constitutional rights to due process,” The Texas Tribune reported in September. But a shameless Abbott has only continued to illegally detain people.

”Under the program, [Texas Department of Public Safety] officers collaborate with the Texas National Guard and county sheriff’s offices to arrest Black and brown migrants on state misdemeanor criminal trespass charges,” the filing said. Some migrants who have faced trespassing charges have then seen those charges dropped, after they revealed officers zip-tied their hands, forced them to climb 10-foot-fencing onto private property, and then arrested them for trespassing.

“Virtually all of those arrested on trespass charges are Black or brown, the overwhelming majority of whom are Latino, and virtually all of those arrested are migrants,” the filing continued. “State troopers’ affidavits evidence racial profiling: they describe observing groups of ‘undocumented migrants’ and note Latino ethnicity as apparently relevant to arrest.”

A participating county named in the filing, Kinney County, was also listed in a Title VI discrimination complaint to the Justice Department last year for “undertaking additional efforts to target migrants,” including “repeatedly” seeking to “partner with vigilante actors,” including Jan. 6 insurrectionists. Daily Kos’ Dave Neiwert also noted last year that Kinney County Sheriff Brad Coe is “a 30-year Border Patrol veteran who keeps Donald Trump stickers on his desk.”

The lawsuit warns that without intervention, Texas plans to continue terrorizing Black and brown migrants through this racist program for several more years (or at least until a Republican is president again). State GOP officials just raided federal coronavirus funds in order to keep the operation funded, ballooning the scheme by another $500 million.

“The program is set up to continue for years, and state officials have repeatedly stated and followed through on expanding it beyond Val Verde and Kinney Counties to other counties in Texas,” the lawsuit said. We have already seen how Republicans have copied forced birth bills and anti-LGBTQ bills from state legislature to state legislature.“Absent federal intervention, it provides a blueprint for other Texas localities and other states to join in similar use of the criminal system to discriminate against Black and brown migrants and seek to effectuate a separate, punitive state immigration system.”

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Posted in Independent News