Photo: Brandon Bell / Getty Images
For: EFE Updated 01 May 2022, 10: 08 am EDT
A group of immigrants detained by the security policies of the Governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, filed a lawsuit requesting an end to arrests of undocumented immigrants on the grounds that “they are discriminatory on the basis of race and national origin.”
The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Austin, Texas, on behalf of 15 immigrants affected by the Lone Star operation, with which Abbott authorized the arrest of undocumented immigrants crossing the southern border under trespassing charges.
The complaint argues that state trespassing arrests are discriminatory and that this discrimination violates the constitutional rights of detainees.
“Under the pretext of the state law of criminal invasion, but with the objective explained citing and declaring to punish immigrants based on their immigration status, Texas officials are attacking immigrants,” the document indicates.
The lawsuit also contends that the arrests “regularly lack probable cause”. It adds that “hundreds of those arrested have waited in jail for weeks or months without a lawyer, without charges, without bail, without a legitimate detention or without a hearing date.”
The legal action, the first at the federal level against the Lone Star operation, seeks to put an end to the practice and that the state of Texas pays more than $5 million dollars to affected foreigners.
Governor Abbott, the directors of the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS), the Texas Department of Justice, and Kinney County, a border area where the vast majority of arrests have been made for trespassing, and its sheriff, were named in the lawsuit.
Abbott launched Operation Lone Star in March 2021 and more than 5, 01 foreigners have been arrested as part of the operation, says the lawsuit a.