The plaintiff’s complaint included a claim of false imprisonment based on the CBP officers’ alleged detention of the 4-year-old for more than 20 hours, alleged refusal to contact her parents for 14 hours or to allow her to continue to New York after she was admitted to the United States, and their ultimate decision to send the child back to Guatemala. In 2011, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), a component of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), unlawfully detained a 4-year-old girl when she arrived at Dulles Airport in Virginia, deprived her of any contact with her parents, and then sent her back to Guatemala. The girl’s father subsequently filed a lawsuit on his daughter’s behalf to seek redress for the harm she suffered and to shed light on an agency that all too often acts outside the law. The government responded by asking the court to dismiss the case on the basis that the actions of the CBP officers fell within the “discretionary function exception,” which applies if the challenged conduct involved an “element of judgment or choice” that implicates public policy considerations and if no particular course of action was dictated by an existing law or mandatory policy. Last month, however, a federal court in New York refused to dismiss the case, finding that the CBP officers’ actions did not fall within the discretionary function exception.
Posted on: Fri, 10 Oct 2014 22:00:38 +0000
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