TAMU Law's Immigrant Rights Clinic advocates for release of detainees

Posted by Texas A&M School of Law on May 19, 2020 10:33:13 AM

Prairieland pic outsideThe Texas A&M Immigrant Rights Clinic filed a petition in federal court last Friday demanding that ICE immediately release eleven medically-vulnerable immigrants from the Prairieland Detention Center, where 45 detained individuals have tested positive for COVID-19. Professor Fatma Marouf, Adjunct Professor Sehla Ashai and students Teresa Reyes Flores, Marisela Gonzales, Mario Guerra, Maria Jose Rosales Lagos and Emily Malden, joined forces with RAICES and the civil rights firm Loevy & Loevy in bringing the case. 

According to the lawsuit, ICE transported a plane of over 80 individuals, some of whom had tested positive for COVID-19, to Prairieland without taking safety precautions. These immigrants were flown to Texas from two jails in New York and Pennsylvania where there were already COVID-19 outbreaks. 

“Our clients at Prairieland are terrified of getting sick and dying of COVID-19," said Marouf. “Many of them have lived in this country for decades and have family members who are U.S. citizens. They don’t want to become an invisible statistic." 

Detainees are unable to safely social distance, have been given only one disposable mask and are living in very close quarters with other cellmates.

“Despite repeated warnings from public health experts, ICE refuses to implement the most basic of steps to protect people detained at Prairieland," said Manoj Govindaiah, director of litigation at RAICES Texas.

Scott Rauscher of Loevy & Loevy noted, "ICE authorities are constitutionally obligated to take common sense measures to protect the health and lives of people imprisoned in their facilities."

Rauscher added, "Detention cannot and should not be a death sentence -- not for the detainees, not for the people who work in ICE facilities, and not for the people in surrounding communities."

Nine hundred sixty-five ICE detainees have tested positive for COVID-19 during the pandemic out of the 1804 detainees tested, according to the latest government statistics. As of May 9, ICE reported nearly 28,000 people in detention.

Copies of the filings can be found here.

About the parties involved:

  • RAICES Texas is a nonprofit agency that promotes justice by providing free and low-cost legal services to underserved immigrant children, families, and refugees. With legal services, social programs, bond assistance, and an advocacy team focused on changing the narrative around immigration in this country, RAICES is operating on the national frontlines of the fight for immigration rights. RAICES envisions a compassionate society where all people have the right to migrate and human rights are guaranteed.
  • The Texas A&M School of Law Immigrant Rights Clinic provides pro bono legal services to immigrants, including deportation defense and federal litigation.
  • Loevy & Loevy is one of the nation’s largest civil rights law firms and has won more multi-million-dollar jury verdicts than any other civil rights law firm in the country.

Contacts:

  • Lucia Allain, RAICES Texas, media@raicestexas.org
  • Fatma Marouf, Professor of Law and Director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic at Texas A&M School of Law, fatma.marouf@law.tamu.edu, 310.431.6693 (cell)
  • Andy Thayer, Loevy & Loevy Attorneys at Law, 773.209.1187, andy@loevy.com

Topics: Clinics, tamu law, immigrant rights clinic, students, faculty and staff, Texas A&M Law

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About Texas A&M School of Law

Texas A&M School of Law is an American Bar Association-accredited institution located in downtown Fort Worth. In 2013, Texas A&M acquired Texas Wesleyan University School of Law. Since integrating with Texas A&M seven years ago, the law school has sustained a remarkable upward trajectory by dramatically increasing entering class credentials, adding 11 clinics and six global field study destinations, increasing the depth and breadth of its career services, student services, academic support and admissions functions and hiring 28 new faculty members.

For more information, visit law.tamu.edu.

About Texas A&M University

Texas A&M, established in 1876 as the first public university in Texas, is one of the nation’s largest universities with more than 66,000 students and more than 440,000 living alumni residing in over 150 countries around the world. A tier-one university, Texas A&M holds the rare triple land-, sea- and space-grant designation. Research conducted at Texas A&M represented annual expenditures of more than $905.4 million in fiscal year 2017. Texas A&M’s research creates new knowledge that provides basic, fundamental and applied contributions resulting, in many cases, in economic benefits to the state, nation and world.

About Research at Texas A&M University: As one of the world's leading research institutions, Texas A&M is at the forefront in making significant contributions to scholarship and discovery, including that of science and technology. Research conducted at Texas A&M represented annual expenditures of more than $905.4 million in fiscal year 2017. Texas A&M ranked in the top 20 of the National Science Foundation’s Higher Education Research and Development survey (2016), based on expenditures of more than $892.7 million in fiscal year 2016. Texas A&M’s research creates new knowledge that provides basic, fundamental and applied contributions resulting, in many cases, in economic benefits to the state, nation and world. To learn more, visit http://research.tamu.edu.