Government Retaliation against Protesting Detainees 2015

The Clinic is co-counseling with a San Antonio based civil rights and immigration attorney to represent three detained asylum-seekers from Central America, along with a proposed class of detained asylum-seekers detained in the Karnes County family detention facility. The plaintiffs allege that facility personnel employed by The GEO Group, Inc. and officers from the Department of Homeland Security retaliated against the plaintiffs for engaging in hunger strikes and other peaceful expressions of speech in protest of their continued detention and the conditions of their detention. Plaintiffs allege that the defendants’ actions in locking them up in isolation rooms, threatening to take away their children, and threatening to deport them all constituted retaliation that violated the plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights. Plaintiffs moved for a temporary restraining order, and after a hearing on the motion, they lost. The case will proceed to trial.