A woman whose 19-month-old daughter died as a result of neglect while in ICE custody made a $60 million wrongful death claim against the federal government on Nov. 27. Yasmin Juárez alleges that daughter Mariee was healthy when she entered the detention facility, and caught a respiratory infection in custody.
After Mariee became ill, facility operators ignored Yasmin’s pleas for care, even after she was too sick to take oral antibiotics. After 20 days, ICE released Yasmin and Mariee, freeing them to seek medical care. But officials had allowed the infection to progress to an extreme. Though Mariee was hospitalized the next day, she died six weeks later.
The federal government has six months to respond to the claim before the attorneys representing Juárez—a powerhouse firm, by the way, Arnold & Porter—can file suit. Juárez and her attorneys are also proceeding with a separate, earlier claim of $40 million against the town of Eloy, Arizona, which is legally responsible for the facility.
The feds are already facing another high-profile wrongful death suit—and the prospect of many more.
On Nov. 19, the Transgender Law Center filed a wrongful death suit on behalf of Roxsana Hernández Rodríguez, who died in New Mexico in May after experiencing horrific conditions in ICE custody. A transgender woman, she was apparently brutally shackled, beaten, and denied basic medical care. The autopsy—paid for by the Transgender Law Center—showed her likely cause of death was extreme dehydration in combination with the complications of HIV.
Hernández Rodríguez’s case is important in its own right, but also holds potential to change patterns of abuse against LGBTQ immigrants. Daily Kos’s Gabe Ortiz has written about abuses against members of this community in detention. LGBTQ people are more likely to be assaulted and targeted for sexual violence—and less likely to get health care.
These suits are hardly the first. In 2012, federal officials settled a wrongful death case with Sara Hernández-González, the widow of a man who died in ICE custody in Georgia. She originally sought $1 million for husband Roberto Medina-Martinez’s wrongful death, but because the suit ended in a settlement, it’s unknown what concessions the federal government made and what award Hernández-González may have received.
Given the deplorable conditions in detention facilities, officials will almost certainly face additional suits soon. Bring them on. Sadly, the courts are one of the few avenues of forcing reform, though even they are being overtaken by Trump.
