A family of asylum seekers who tried to flee to Canada but were arrested before they reached the northern border were held in a small cell in a temporary detention center in Blaine for about four weeks in “deplorable conditions,” the American Civil Liberties Union said in a legal claim against the federal government.
The complaint names the Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection and the Blaine Border Patrol Station. The family, including four children at the time, were held from April to May in 2025.
The claim seeks damages for “the extreme harm resulting from Customs and Border Protection’s failure to abide by minimum standards of care or its own policies,” the ACLU of Washington said in a news release on Wednesday.
The federal government has six months to respond to the claim, which is asking for $15 million for the family.
Customs and Border Protection and the Blaine Border Patrol Station couldn’t be reached for comment before press time.
It’s part of 54 claims the ACLU in 17 states and Washington, D.C., filed this month under the Federal Tort Claims Act against federal law enforcement for violating people’s rights, according to the news release.
The ACLU said the family — identified only as Josefina, her husband José and their four children — came to the U.S. in 2024 from a country in which the government imprisoned and tortured José because of his membership in an opposition political party. The other members of the family were “assaulted and terrorized.”
The couple’s home country wasn’t named in the claim, but the ACLU confirmed the family was from southwestern Africa and living in Washington state at the time.
They applied for asylum promptly after being admitted into the U.S., the ACLU said, but an immigration judge denied the family’s request for additional time to submit proof of their asylum claim and ordered their deportation in April 2025.
The family then tried to enter Canada, where they planned to seek asylum, but were detained in Blaine with their children, who were then 13, 10 and 5 years old; one child was 11 months old at the time. Josefina was about five months pregnant as well, and her pregnancy was high risk because of her diabetes.
The small cell they were held in had one toilet and no window to the outside world.
“CBP officials rarely let the family out of the cell, which was unbearably hot and filthy. For two weeks, the family members were unable to change their clothes or take a shower, and the children had no toys, books, tv, or any form of mental stimulation or physical activity,” the ACLU alleged. “When the family was finally allowed out of the cell to shower, José and his son were both handcuffed.”
The heat made breathing difficult for Josefina, and it made her dizzy, according to the ACLU. When she knocked on the cell door for help, CBP staff ignored her or accused her of faking her illness, until she passed out and was taken to the hospital for the first of two times.
She was returned to the cell after the first time, even though doctors told CBP her confinement was unsafe. Less than a week later, Josefina became unconscious a second time and was once again taken to the hospital.
Those weeks in the cell remain with the family months later.
“After we were released, my children were terrified to leave our home because they thought they could get sent back to the cell at any time,” Josefina said in the claim. “My oldest son cried through our immigration hearing in fear we would be arrested again.”
