Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security after a Chinese illegal immigrant with severe illness was transported through the state’s detention centers without medical isolation.
The Chinese national was carrying a severe, drug-resistant form of tuberculosis (TB), called pre-extensively drug-resistant TB (pre-XDR TB). The lack of medical isolation led to hundreds of detainees and possibly members of the public being exposed to the disease across Monroe, Basile, and Lafayette.
The emergency lawsuit comes as “ICE has announced its intent to release potentially infected detainees from its two contract facilities—without being medically cleared by the Louisiana Department of Health—if an order requires release,” the suit reads. “Specifically, in the event that (for example) an Article I immigration judge orders a detainee’s release, ICE’s stated intent is to release that detainee onto Louisiana streets, its bus stations, and its airports. By ICE’s telling, its hands are tied once its immigration-based detention authority runs out.”
According to the state’s Surgeon General, Ralph Abraham, detainees are required to be held “unless and until they are medically cleared by the Louisiana Department of Health,” the suit explains, noting that ICE intends to proceed with release orders if told to do so. Such action would be “contrary to wide swaths of federal regulations; blatantly arbitrary and capricious; and a direct violation of the Tenth Amendment and Louisiana’s sovereign authority,” the lawsuit asserts.
On October 10, Abraham told ICE in a letter to “halt all movement of exposed detainees until they are cleared by our LDH Disease Intervention Specialists after being appropriately screened.”
He then issued three emergency orders. In an October 11 order, Abraham demanded the Chinese national be held in a hospital. On October 12, the state’s surgeon general ordered that the Basile facility be isolated. A similar order was issued to the Richwood facility on October 14.
ICE representatives said that they would still comply with a release order.
“In other words, the federal government’s position is that it (through its private contract facilities) will not comply with the Surgeon General’s [State Health Officer] Orders,” the lawsuit says.
Murrill said in a statement that the “protection of our southern border is paramount to the security of the United States. It is neither political nor unreasonable that Louisiana has time and time again demanded that the Biden-Harris administration defend this nation.”
“Those not legally present should not be in the country – period. Millions of undocumented illegal aliens continue to pour across the southern border – unidentified, untracked, and untested for diseases that can threaten the lives of American citizens,” she continued. “The federal government has put the health and safety of Louisiana and American people at risk. Despite this dereliction of duty by President Biden, Vice President Harris, and Secretary Mayorkas, Louisiana officials acted immediately to protect our people.”
