Civil rights attorneys say the federal government is violating the civil rights of an immigrant with disabilities by keeping her locked up in a Louisiana detention center for more than five months, according to a federal lawsuit.
The suit, filed Monday (Oct. 21) in federal court in New Orleans, alleges that federal immigration authorities’ refusal to grant a temporary release to Ermine Nersisian, a Russian national with a severe condition that limits her mobility, has left her unable to access appropriate medical care, causing her condition to worsen. Nersisian’s attorneys say the decision to keep her in custody violates both U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) policy and federal law.
“Defendants’ refusal to release Ermine is not only cruel; it is also unlawful,” Nersisian’s attorneys wrote in the complaint.
Nersisian is being represented by the ACLU of Louisiana and RFK Human Rights. The groups named the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the agency’s leader Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, ICE and top officials in the regional ICE office in New Orleans as defendants in the complaint.
“It strains credulity when they say this woman is a flight risk.”
Sarah Gillman, RFK Human Rights
According to the lawsuit, Nersisian, 51, has bilateral osteoarthritis – a degenerative condition that affects her ability to move her knees – along with an injury in the meniscus cartilage of one of the joints. She also has “severe anxiety and depression, both of which are being exacerbated by conditions related to her ongoing detention,” according to a letter (cited in the complaint and previously provided to ICE) from an attending physician at New York-Presbyterian Hospital who reviewed her medical records.
Though Nersisian is barely able to get around on her own, the New Orleans ICE Field Office has labeled her a potential flight risk without providing any explanation for that finding, according to the suit. Since July, the office has denied four requests for Nersisian to be released while her claim for asylum makes its way through the immigration court system, a procedure called parole.
“It strains credulity when they say this woman is a flight risk,” said Sarah Gillman, one of the attorneys representing Nersisian in the lawsuit. “Where is she going? … She can hardly walk.”
Nerisisan entered the country with family members earlier this year and quickly applied for asylum, claiming that she experienced persecution in Russia. She is now being held at the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Basile, which is owned and operated by the private prison contractor GEO Group.
Federal agencies are prohibited from discriminating against people with disabilities. Under the federal Rehabilitation Act, ICE and its contractors are required to provide “reasonable accommodations” to people with physical or mental disabilities to ensure that they can access all benefits, services and programs available in detention.
For Nersisian, the only reasonable accommodation is parole, her attorneys claim. They said she’s received no treatment to stop her disabilities from getting worse and doesn’t access much of the facility for fear of getting hurt.
Immigrant and disability rights attorneys say ICE has a pattern of refusing to release people with disabilities from detention, even as federal oversight bodies and watchdog groups have found the agency has failed to provide appropriate care.
“Sadly, her situation is not unique,” Gillman said. “We’ve seen many people who have both mental and physical disabilities and there’s a refusal on the part of ICE to release them.”
Nersisian’s condition has worsened since her detention began, Gillman said. Once able to get around with a cane, she now must use a wheelchair. She frequently complains of severe pain and was recently taken to an outside medical provider after losing control of one of her legs.
When Verite News spoke with Nersisian in the beginning of October, she said she missed her family and wanted to be released from detention to receive medical care that might improve her mobility.
“I think that the most terrible thing is to be separated from your family, and I believe that being with your family can heal all of your medical conditions,” Nersisian said through an interpreter.
‘I was very shocked how she presents’
In early May, Nersisian traveled with her daughter, son-in-law and grandchild from Russia to Mexico’s border with California in hopes of seeking asylum in the United States.
The group made an appointment with U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents through the CBP One mobile application, as the federal government advises. After their initial detainment by CBP agents, the rest of Nersisian’s family was released to live with her sister and brother-in-law, both U.S. citizens, in California.
“They didn’t tell me that they were released and I was in so much stress because I didn’t know where they took my family,” Nersisian said.
Meanwhile Nersisian said she was placed in handcuffs and ankle shackles and transferred to ICE detention, first in Otay Mesa, California and then in Basile. Before the flight to Louisiana, she said she stood at the bottom of the stairs leading to the airplane for thirty minutes until someone could help her because her disability makes bending her legs difficult, and the ankle shackles made it even harder for her to move.
She remained in the Basile detention center even though she passed an initial screening — called a credible fear screening — proving to an asylum officer that her story of persecution in Russia is credible and that she could qualify for protected status.
In July, another detainee spoke to RFK Human Rights attorneys visiting the facility on Nersisian’s behalf, asking them to assist with her case. She spoke directly to the group about her situation for the first time on July 19. The same day, Gillman emailed the New Orleans ICE Field Office.
Gillman first saw Nersisian walk on a video legal call in August. Describing the call, Gillman said she took notice of how difficult it was for Nersisian to walk, even with a cane. Every step Nersisian took looked painful, Gillman said.
“I was very shocked how she presents,” Gillman, who directs strategic U.S. litigation at nonprofit RFK Human Rights, said in an interview. “When I say she can’t walk, I’m not exaggerating.”
The organization submitted Nersisian’s first formal parole request in late July, then again on Aug. 7, Sept. 9 and Oct. 3. Each was denied, with the same cursory explanation — a form with a checked box next to the line: “You have failed to satisfy to ICE’s satisfaction you are not a flight risk.”
Those denials violate ICE policy, Nersisian’s lawyers say. Under a binding agency directive on parole, first issued in 2009, the agency must conduct an individualized review of parole requests, to determine whether parole applicants present a flight risk or a danger to the community.
Instead, ICE has “issued four identical, cursory denials that do not include any individualized determination. Defendants’ failure to conduct an individualized review of Ermine’s case is arbitrary and capricious, and contrary to law,” the lawsuit says.
In an emailed response to questions from Verite News, Tamara Spicer, a spokesperson for ICE, said medical administrators and staff had seen Nersisian “ambulating on her own, visiting with her peers, folding her clothes and laughing with her peers.” She said the New Orleans ICE office denied Nersisian’s requests for release “based on mitigating factors with sponsorship.” She did not elaborate on what those factors are.
‘I want to escape this place’
Elizabeth Jordan, director of the Immigration Law and Policy Clinic at the University of Denver, specializes in representing disabled immigrants in detention. ’
She said although federal law requires ICE facilities to screen newly arriving for physical and mental disabilities, their processes are often inadequate.
“In my experience, the agency and the contractors that they work with are woefully ill equipped to understand disability and screen for it and identify it and accommodate people who have disabilities,” Jordan said.
Jordan was the lead attorney in a 2019 class action suit against ICE alleging the agency failed to provide proper medical and mental health care and disability accommodations for its most vulnerable detainees. That lawsuit names plaintiff Melvin Murillo Hernandez, who was detained at a GEO detention center in Louisiana and suffered “seven severe allergic reactions” because the facility failed to give him a special diet that accommodated his food allergies for more than six months. Instead, the lawsuit said, he was placed in solitary confinement on the basis of his allergies, which qualified him as having a disability.
“I think that the most terrible thing is to be separated from your family.”
Ermine Nersisian
Jordan noted that a report from the DHS Office of Inspector General, released in September, found that 17 ICE detention centers – including two overseen by the New Orleans ICE office – failed to comply with federal immigration detention standards in multiple areas, including chronic medical care and medical staffing.
“The OIG’s recent findings support what we’ve known for a long time which is that regardless of the kind of detention center people are in, their experiences are kind of remarkably similar,” Jordan said.
Nersisian’s lawyers say that conditions and lack of care in the detention facility have even affected her asylum case. According to the lawsuit, her deteriorating health over the past several months has made it difficult for her even to participate in immigration court proceedings. During a late August court hearing, the lawsuit claims, the judge “noted that Ermine was in physical and mental distress because it was visible to all present who could observe Plaintiff that she could hardly walk, was in physical pain and cried for much of the court hearing.”
“If the fact of detention is causing somebody to not be able to meaningfully access their immigration proceedings then it constitutes disability discrimination and the reasonable accommodation in that case should be release,” Jordan said.
Now, Gillman said, Nersisian uses a wheelchair because she is barely able to walk. According to the lawsuit, ICE and the GEO Group have not provided her with adequate treatment, beyond painkillers, for her disability.
Responding to a request for comment, Christopher Fereira, a GEO Group spokesperson, referred Verite News to ICE. Spicer, the ICE spokesperson, disputed the claims, saying Nersisian is receiving treatment beyond pain management.
Last week, one of Nersisian’s legs gave out as she tried to use the restroom, according to the lawsuit, saved from a potentially damaging fall when her dorm mates rushed in to hold her up. “After crying out in excruciating pain,” the lawsuit says, she was transported to an outside medical provider, where she was given no treatment beyond pain pills.
Even before this latest loss of mobility, her hope had faded.
“I want to escape this place,” Nersisian said. “I think I’m gonna die here.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story mischaracterized Nersisian’s current condition. According to her attorney, while her ability to walk has been severely impaired and she uses a wheelchair, she still has a limited ability to walk short distances.
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