Current, ex-detainees sue over treatment of undocumented immigrants at Orange County Jail

GOSHEN – Undocumented immigrants were served rotten food, denied medical care, physically and verbally abused and regularly subjected to arbitrary punishment while being detained at Orange County Correctional Facility, according to a lawsuit filed on Tuesday by six immigrants who are or were previously held at the jail.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, states several local, state and federal officials violated immigrants’ First Amendment rights by retaliating against detainees who attempted to speak out about and protest their treatment.

“This lawsuit is saying that Orange County Jail and ICE regularly engage in retaliation against immigrants who are detained in their facility, and they neglect and abuse them,” said Samah Sisay, a staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights. “It's unconstitutional, and they need to be held accountable for it.”

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The plaintiffs — Nahum Gilberto Ortiz, Denny Molina Cantor, Lucas Palacios Alvarado, Jeremias Lopez Lopez, Elmer Moscoso Guerra and Luis Gonzalez Carbajal — are asking for monetary damages to compensate for their suffering. In addition, Lopez and Moscoso are asking to be released from a punitive segregation unit of Orange County Jail, and Molina and Palacios, who were recently transferred to facilities in the South, are asking to be returned to the New York area in order to be near their families and legal counsel.

Ortiz, one of the plaintiffs, was released from Orange County Jail in March and is staying with family in Long Island. He said he constantly fears jail employees and county officials will retaliate against him for speaking out about what he endured while he was detained, but he hopes the lawsuit will help those who are still being held at the Goshen jail.

“We're not jail inmates. We're ICE detainees. We're not waiting for sentencing, but they're trying to treat us like criminals,” Ortiz said. “So that's my goal: change the system for ICE detainees. If you're going to have ICE detainees there, please change the system. Change the way that all the officers behave towards us.

"When they talk to us, don't treat us like trash. Don't treat us like we have no worth … The end goal for me is to change the system in Orange County Jail, for them to stop treating us like the way that we're still getting treated, like some type of animals or some type of beast.”

The lawsuit was filed on the six plaintiffs’ behalf by the Bronx Defenders, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and the New York Civil Liberties Union. The defendants are Orange County, New York; former Orange County sheriff Carl Dubois; former Orange County undersheriff Kenneth Jones, the Department of Homeland Security; ICE; and acting ICE field office director Kenneth Genalo.

Orange County, according to an emailed statement from the county's attorney Richard Golden, "categorically denies that it acted in an unconstitutional or otherwise illegal manner. The County Jail is a highly credentialed and model facility. The Plaintiffs’ lack of merit in their allegations will be proven in court.”

A history of ICE detainees' efforts to improve conditions

Orange County has housed detainees for U.S. ICE since 2008. The Goshen jail is one of three ICE detention centers in New York, and one of two in the New York City area.

The lawsuit describes the current environment inside the jail as "marked by deprivation and abject suffering. Assaults and racist verbal abuse by staff run rampant. Basic medical and mental healthcare are frequently delayed or denied altogether. Inedible meals comprised of rancid meat have been the norm. Access to immigration counsel is often non-existent.”

Jail employees also routinely punish detainees by “locking them in” or keeping them in their cells for upwards of 20 hours per day, according to Ortiz, one of the plaintiffs.

“I just spent time working out and thinking about my family, thinking about if I was going to get out or not,” said Ortiz when asked how he passed the time when he was locked in. “(I would think things) that a prisoner would think like, ‘Why am I in this situation? What is this officer punishing me for?’ Asking myself questions, laying in bed. There's not much you could do inside by yourself.”

In 2021, according to the lawsuit, several immigrant detainees began to complain about and protest their treatment at the jail by filing grievances with the jail, submitting formal complaints to federal authorities, speaking during New York City Council meetings, and contacting elected officials, journalists and advocates. Their efforts culminated in February 2022 when several detainees, including the plaintiffs, staged a hunger strike at the jail.

“All of these things were really focused on the conditions and treatment of people inside the jail,” Sisay said. “All of these accusations were really around medical neglect, and they were around racist treatment from the guards. They were about retaliation and the ways in which people are being treated.”

Following the strike, the lawsuit states federal and local officials attempted to silence the detainees’ criticism of the jail’s treatment of immigrants and aggressively retaliated against strike participants. Guards searched their cells and confiscated their belongings, according to the lawsuit. Some participants, including plaintiffs Ortiz, Lopez and Moscoso, were placed in a punitive segregation unit within the jail, and plaintiffs Molina and Palacios were transferred to a facility in Natchez, Mississippi, according to the lawsuit.

"A lot of these folks were people who were organizers, inside organizers who were speaking out and engaged in the hunger strike, spoke to reporters, and did everything to really ensure that their basic rights are being respected," said Sisay.

During an interview with the Times Herald-Record in 2022, defendant and former undersheriff Kenneth Jones confirmed the jail punished detainees for rejecting food because they were acting as a group.

During the 2022 interview, Jones also disputed many allegations made by detainees and said others are exaggerated.

Life after ICE detention

The past month has been strange and bittersweet, Ortiz said. In March, he was able to return home to his family in Long Island, but he said he does not feel free.

"I'm happy. (My family is) happy. They are joyful. But I'm still − when I am trying to go out, I get car sick. And I'm trying to keep a social life like (my social worker) tells me to, but I still can't really socialize," Ortiz said. "I still feel strange. I feel weird going out ... The way I'm feeling is: It's hurtful. It's hurtful what I went through. I'm still trying to cope with it."

Ortiz still feels targeted by jail employees and county officials who he said resent him for his advocacy.

"If I go out, I feel like I'm being targeted, like I'm being seen, like someone's going to come and get me," Ortiz said. "I am paranoid."

But he said he is hopeful that the culture at Orange County Jail can change so that future detainees have a better experience than he did.

"(Orange County Jail) has a system that is very racist. They automatically mistreat you only because you're Spanish, only because you don’t speak English," Ortiz said. "I really think that Orange County Jail needs to change the system that they have for us."

Sisay, the Center for Constitutional Rights lawyer, said Ortiz and each of the plaintiffs all filed the lawsuit in an effort to better conditions for all immigrants being detained by ICE.

"They're the ones who have suffered the most and who have the most risk coming forward," Sisay said. "Regardless of that, they continue to push because they know what they experienced. And it was horrific."

Erin Nolan is an investigative reporter for the Times Herald-Record and USA Today Network. Reach her at enolan@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Times Herald-Record: Migrants file lawsuit alleging mistreatment at Orange County Jail