Attorney General Liz Murrill is suing the federal government to keep people at two detention facilities in Louisiana locked up past their release dates because some detainees might have been exposed to a rare form of tuberculosis. (Getty Images)
Attorney General Liz Murrill is suing the federal government to keep people at two detention facilities in Louisiana locked up beyond the period they can be held in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody because some detainees might have been exposed to a rare form of tuberculosis.
State officials confirmed Wednesday that one detainee has tested positive for a drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis that is not common in the United States. The woman, identified in the lawsuit only as “patient zero” is a Chinese national that does not have legal status to be in the United States.
The woman has potentially exposed more than 200 other detainees at ICE-contracted facilities in Monroe and Basile, according to the lawsuit.
No one else held at the centers has tested positive for tuberculosis, state officials said.
Tuberculosis is an infectious disease with symptoms that include coughing, night sweats, weight loss, bloody mucus and fever. It is spread through the air. According to the World Health Organization, about 5-10% of those infected will eventually develop symptoms and only individuals with symptoms can transmit it.
Patient zero is currently asymptomatic and receiving treatment, Surgeon General Ralph Abraham told reporters Wednesday.
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At a news conference, Gov. Jeff Landry Landry railed against unlawful border crossings as a threat to public health.
“While I was the attorney general, I warned consistently that an open, porous border, an unchecked border, were allowing people to come into this country with diseases that this country’s health care system has consistently worked to eradicate,” Landry said.
Landry stressed that there is currently no danger to the general public from the strain of tuberculosis.
At the core of the lawsuit, which names senior Biden administration officials, including U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, is the idea of state’s rights.
According to the lawsuit, the state requests that ICE comply with a directive from Abraham that detainees at the facility remain isolated until “medically cleared” — a term not defined in the lawsuit.
“Medical clearance just means there’s a safe plan to move the patient without risk of further exposure. This is an individualized determination based on a number of factors and the specific details of each case,” Emma Herrock, communications director at LDH, said in a statement to the Illuminator.
Federal officials confirmed to the state the two facilities are no longer taking in new detainees, according to the lawsuit. ICE will contact Louisiana health officials if a detainee is legally required to be released, the court document said.
“In the federal government’s view, it can wash its hands of a public disaster of its own making and then force Louisiana to either (a) let a potentially infected detainee run free in Louisiana or (b) attempt to redetain the detainee and figure out housing, isolation, and other measures all while trying to solve the State-wide problem that the federal government created,” Murrill’s lawsuit reads.
The state has been granted a temporary restraining order that bars the federal government from releasing detainees from the two facilities until a hearing can be held next week on a preliminary injunction. The order applies to all detainees at the two facilities, not just those who were potentially exposed to patient zero.
Murrill argues that the police powers the U.S. Constitution grants to states gives them the ability to supersede federal orders to release detainees and keep them quarantined until cleared.
Murrill’s office declined to answer questions about the state’s legal authority to detain individuals who have not been diagnosed with tuberculosis past the time the federal government is legally required to release them or whether their legal reasoning would apply to U.S. citizens.
The attorney general’s office also declined to address the personal liberty concerns raised by detaining uninfected individuals past their release dates. Murrill, Landry and other conservatives voiced similar issues during the COVID-19 pandemic.
During the early phases of the pandemic, the state placed restrictions on businesses and schools but did not forcibly hold individuals for quarantine.
Louisiana law allows people to be quarantined for tuberculosis, but only for someone who is confirmed to have the disease and doesn’t comply with their treatment.
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