Federal judge extends restraining order in tuberculosis-infected detainee case

(The Center Square) – A federal judge extended a temporary restraining order Wednesday in a case involving the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and its plans to release a tuberculosis-positive Chinese migrant into the U.S. without clearance from the state Health Department.

U.S. District Judge David Joseph issued an order that says the restraining order applies only to 211 detainees quarantined by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency at the private Richwood Correctional Center in Monroe, and the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Basile.

Joseph said in the order the preliminary injunction hearing scheduled for Thursday will be postponed until Nov. 13 in Lafayette and the restraining order will extend until that hearing.

The order says the detainees who entered the country illegally will be screened by the Louisiana Department of Health before they can be released, but it doesn’t prevent ICE from moving a detainee out of state or out of the country providing the detainee is subjected to monitoring, testing and results are provided to the state health department for its investigation.

Also, ICE can transport quarantined migrants to a Louisiana health care facility provided officials advise the state health department with its precautions to ensure they don’t transmit tuberculosis.

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill is sued the federal government with an emergency lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana on Oct. 16.

As previously reported by The Center Square, state officials were informed that an unnamed Chinese migrant, who entered the U.S. illegally in April, tested positive for a drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis with a high rate of mortality Oct. 9.

The detainee had been flown from California to Alexandria and then sent to Richwood in July. The lawsuit says the detainee was not placed in isolation despite a positive TB test July 23 and moved to the Basile facility and kept in the general population.

The lawsuit also says 174 migrants were at the Basile facility that could have been potentially exposed, with 60 having been deported, relocated or released.

State officials say the detainee came in contact with hundreds of other detainees and staff.