Faour Abdallah Fraihat began losing vision in his left eye while jailed at a private detention facility in California that detains people for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Court documents state that as he continued to deteriorate, he was denied a surgery that had been recommended by a doctor. When he was finally able to see someone several months later, he was told it was too late—the damage was irreversible. He remains jailed at Adelanto, which is operated by private prison profiteer GEO Group.
Fraihat is now among the 15 immigrants named in a nationwide class action lawsuit filed by Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center, Disability Rights Advocates, Southern Poverty Law Center, Al Otro Lado, and Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice against the Trump administration over “the delay and outright denial of medical care, the punitive use of solitary confinement, the failure to provide mental health care, and discrimination against people requiring disability accommodations.”
The 15 plaintiffs don’t want any monetary damages, a statement reads. They just want the U.S. to treat people better. “Plaintiff Marco Montoya Amaya is 41 years old and currently detained at Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center,” court documents continue. “For over a year, he has had a tentative diagnosis of end-stage neurocysticercosis—a progressive, invasive, and severe brain parasite—for which he has received no treatment.”
Another plaintiff, Jose Segovia Benitez, is a Marine veteran who did two tours in Iraq. “He came home from service with depression, anxiety, hearing loss, traumatic brain injury, and combat PTSD.” He also has a heart condition that has left him with request bouts of chest pains and dizziness, “for which treatment has been delayed or denied.”
In fact, it’s been Segovia Benitez who has been the one to provide services for Adelanto, by translating for deaf detainees since ICE won’t give them the aid they need. “Although he is not fluent in ASL, he took three semesters of ASL at community college. He has translated without any prompting from Adelanto.” The groups note that many people detained in private and public facilities “could be legally released on parole or with a bond, but ICE chooses to detain them instead, at an average cost of $208.00 per individual, per day.”
In 2018, a surprise inspection at Adelanto by the Department of Homeland Security inspector general uncovered “serious violations,” including “nooses in detainee cells,” falsified medical exams, and prison officials placing a disabled man who asked for administrative segregation into disciplinary segregation. “Based on our file review,” the report stated, “in those 9 days, the detainee never left his wheelchair to sleep in a bed or brush his teeth.”
“This administration’s horrific mistreatment of immigrants is not limited to individuals at the border,” said Lisa Graybill of the SPLC. “At least twenty-six people have died since Trump took office, and tens of thousands have suffered as a result of the federal government’s abject failure to provide basic medical care at the facilities where taxpayers are spending billions to detain immigrants. More will suffer, and more will die, without court intervention.”