PHOENIX (AP) - Attorneys in a civil case against the Border Patrol over Arizona jails want a federal judge to hold the agency in contempt for failing to provide surveillance video showing the conditions in which immigrants are held.
A coalition of advocacy groups and attorneys asked Judge David Bury of Tucson on Monday to hold the Border Patrol in contempt and issue sanctions over surveillance video the agency is legally required to provide but hasn’t in full because some footage files are corrupted.
The lawsuit was first filed in June 2015 alleging that the Tucson Sector, which comprises most of Arizona and includes eight stations, keeps migrant holding cells extremely cold and filthy. Immigrants are typically only held in Border Patrol custody for a short amount of time before they are released, removed from the country or sent to the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which has longer-term detention centers.
The ACLU, National Immigration Law Center and the Morrison and Foerster law firm say the Border Patrol told them some video surveillance footage files are damaged because of updates to the operating systems they are kept under.
Attorneys say the agency has known since June 2016 that some files from that year were corrupt but only notified them in December. The Border Patrol had previously turned over files from 2005.
This is not the first time plaintiffs have sought punitive action against the agency in the lawsuit.
Bury in September 2015 sanctioned the Border Patrol over its destruction of video evidence, saying the agency’s decision to do so was “at best, negligent and was certainly willful.”
The Border Patrol does not comment on pending litigation.
The government also fought for months to keep photographs taken by security cameras at the Arizona stations under seal. The photos were eventually released, and they showed men jammed together under a thin thermal blanket and a woman using a concrete floor strewn with trash to change a baby’s diaper. Pictures also showed rusty toilets, dirty toilet paper on the floor and a malfunctioning water fountain.
The Border Patrol has defended its practices and said it’s committed to the safety, security and welfare of detainees. It maintains that it provides migrants with basic human needs in accordance with its own policies, and that agents provide medical care, warmth, sanitation, food and water, and allows detainees to sleep.
But Bury in November 2016 ordered the Border Patrol to improve holding facility conditions, saying the agency was not following its own standards by keeping migrants in crowded, cold cells without proper bedding.
The temporary order requires the Tucson Sector to provide clean mats and thin blankets to migrants held for longer than 12 hours and to allow them to wash or clean themselves.
Bury said plaintiffs presented persuasive evidence that basic human needs of migrants were not being met.
The lawsuit was originally filed on behalf of three immigrants, but it is now a class-action suit.
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