Federal judge: Border Patrol in Arizona violated court order
PHOENIX — A federal judge has said the Border Patrol in Arizona violated court orders by failing to properly preserve surveillance video related to a lawsuit claiming the agency detains migrants in inhumane conditions.
U.S. District Judge David Bury on Monday partially granted a motion to hold the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector in civil contempt over video files it was legally required to provide but were irreparably damaged. The court found that the Border Patrol knew about the corrupted files in June 2016, but it never notified the plaintiffs.
The ACLU, the National Immigration Law Center and the Morrison and Foerster law firm filed the contempt request in January after realizing a month earlier that the files had been corrupted and could not be opened.
The lawsuit originally filed in 2015 claims that the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector, which comprises most of Arizona, holds migrants in extremely filthy and cold cells.
Read more: https://www.abqjournal.com/969010/federal-judge-border-patrol-in-arizona-violated-court-order.html
