The widow of a Mexican man who crossed into the U.S. illegally in the trunk of a car is suing the federal government on allegations that staff at a detention facility in Otay Mesa repeatedly ignored his pleas for medical care, causing him to die in a hospital from complications of pneumonia weeks later.

The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in San Diego federal court, is among a string of similar cases alleging indifference and negligence to the medical problems of unauthorized immigrants being held at such detention centers across the country. A 2007 lawsuit filed by the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union that settled in 2010 addressed similar issues in Otay Mesa.

“If these facts in the complaint are true, then this would violate the core principles not only of the Constitution but of the settlement,” said David Loy, legal director for the ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties. The prior lawsuit “addressed precisely this kind of problem of people begging for care and not getting care.”

The Otay Mesa Detention Center houses mostly unauthorized immigrants for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as well as criminal detainees and material witnesses for the U.S. Marshals Service.


The lawsuit names the federal government, as well as CoreCivic — the private company contracted to run the Otay Mesa Detention Center and many others across the nation — as well as a CoreCivic guard identified as C.O. Langdon.

Health care at the facility is provided by ICE’s Health Service Corps and the federal Public Health Service, according to the lawsuit. A San Diego ICE spokeswoman declined to comment on the case Thursday, saying she didn’t have enough information. A CoreCivic spokesman in Tennessee, where the company is headquartered, said the company has not been served yet and has not had a chance to review the lawsuit.

According to court records, Gerardo Cruz-Sanchez, 32, tried to cross into the U.S. in the trunk of a car on Feb. 4, 2016, at the Otay Mesa Port of Entry. The driver, Juan Carlos Ortega-Gonzalez, had presented someone else’s U.S. passport to the Customs and Border Protection officer. Cruz-Sanchez and two other unauthorized immigrants were then found in the trunk.

Cruz-Sanchez wasn’t charged with a crime but held as a material witness in the case against the smuggler, agreeing to testify against him. Cruz-Sanchez was granted bail — $15,000 with a 10 percent cash deposit — but was unable to pay so he remained detained, according to court records.


(The driver eventually pleaded guilty to human smuggling and was sentenced to time served in custody, which was about three months.)

Cruz-Sanchez was healthy when he was arrested but contracted pneumonia soon after, according to the complaint.

“He would be alive today if authorities had honored their legal and moral duty to care for their own witness,” the lawsuit states. “This lawsuit seeks justice on behalf of Gerardo Cruz-Sanchez and the family that he left behind.”

The illness began with flu-like symptoms, and Cruz-Sanchez’s many requests for medical attention were rebuffed, according to the complaint. He then started coughing up blood, “saturating his clothing and bed sheets,” the lawsuit says. He pleaded with Langdon and medical staff members for intervention but received none, the suit says.


His condition deteriorated so that he could not talk, move or swallow food, and he suffered from respiratory distress and wheezing, the suit says.

His cellmate, Alejandro Chavez, called the Mexican consulate 20 to 30 times asking for assistance, and on Feb. 22 a Spanish interpreter visited Cruz-Sanchez. It is unclear from the lawsuit if the interpreter tried to take action.

The cellmate repeatedly begged Langdon — a Spanish-speaking officer — for help for Cruz-Sanchez, but Langdon mocked him, told the two to stop “complaining,” and told Cruz-Sanchez to “man up” and “stop being a chicken,” according to the lawsuit.

On the morning of Feb. 26, Cruz-Sanchez’s mattress was soaked in blood from the coughing, and detainees moved him to a table in the common room to try to get him to eat, the lawsuit says. Langdon is accused of scolding them and forcing Cruz-Sanchez to get on the ground. The others were ordered back to their cells, the lawsuit says.


Later that day, Cruz-Sanchez was taken to the emergency room at Scripps Mercy Hospital in Chula Vista, where he died Feb. 29.

The lawsuit claims Cruz-Sanchez was never examined by a doctor while in custody. His widow, Paula Garcia Rivera, requested her husband’s medical records from the detention center but was ignored, according to the complaint.

The lawsuit lists several other alleged examples of detainees at other CoreCivic immigration facilities who died or became seriously ill after being denied medical treatment or medication.

In 2002, the government took back medical care duties from CoreCivic, then known as Corrections Corporation of America, at the immigration jail in Otay Mesa at the time, called the San Diego Correctional Facility.


But problems persisted, the ACLU alleged. The ACLU class-action lawsuit claimed detainees there had to wait long periods for medical treatment — often times only after their conditions had significantly worsened — did not get medications for chronic illnesses and had poor mental health care.

The settlement required ICE practice the standards of care set by the national Commission on Correctional Health Care, as well as eliminate from its written policies that detainees receive only emergency care.

The settlement was reached without ICE or Corrections Corporation of America admitting liability or wrongdoing.

In a statement in 2010 regarding the settlement, ICE said it was proud of the progress it had made to reform the immigration detention system and that it is committed to providing a high quality of medical care for detainees.


kristina.davis@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @kristinadavis