A group of 35 Uzbek citizens, currently detained in various US immigration centres, filed a lawsuit against US President Joseph Biden, Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas and Acting Deputy Director for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Patrick Lechleitner, among others. The plaintiffs allege that the defendants are actively involved in discriminatory policies and practices concerning the detention of Uzbek immigrants seeking asylum.
The lawsuit seeks to declare their detention procedure illegal due to alleged discrimination based on nationality. It also requests coverage of legal costs.
Abadir Barre, the immigration lawyer leading the case, stated that the lawsuit aims to release the plaintiffs from custody. The lawsuit was filed over a weekend and is currently pending. The court has already entered it into the system, and a judge is expected to be assigned shortly.
The lawsuit document states that Uzbek citizens are being held in inadequate pre-trial detention centres and have limited access to legal counsel.
Law enforcement agencies have reportedly detained even minors (in the USA, adulthood begins at 21 years of age). One such case occurred in September 2023 when two 19-year-old boys from Uzbekistan crossed the border and headed to California. After living there for about three weeks, FBI agents arrived at their house and took them away for questioning.
Despite finding no incriminating evidence during the interrogation, the boys were sent to a migration prison where they remained from the beginning of October to the end of December. A request for bail was initially opposed by the prosecutor, citing the boys’ travel route as a known path for transporting terrorists. However, when asked for specific evidence, the prosecutor could not provide any. The boys were subsequently released on bail of $14,000.
Utkur Rakhmatullaev, a blogger from Uzbekistan who lived in the States for over 20 years, suspects a connection between the arrests and the routes used by the detainees. He noted that not only Uzbeks but also people from the entire former USSR use the same route: Türkiye-Spain-South America-USA.
Earlier, CNN also reported that US officials are closely scrutinizing several migrants as potential criminal threats. However, no evidence was provided by the US migration services linking the 35 plaintiffs to terrorists. The lawsuit suggests that some arrests may have been related to the suspects’ religion.
The US Embassy in Uzbekistan declined to comment on the incident.
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