Summary: ACLU files lawsuit against ICE and DHS Camp East Montana houses over 2,700 detainees El Paso medical examiners ruled a detainee death a homicide Civil rights groups have filed a lawsuit over alleged human rights abuses at the United States' largest immigration detention center in El Paso, Texas, where three people have died in the nine months since it opened.  The American Civil Liberties Union, and other groups, brought the complaint on behalf of four people currently held at Camp East Montana, a sprawling tent encampment set up under President Donald Trump's mass-deportation strategy.  The action, filed in United States District Court Western District of Texas, names camp operator U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and parent agency the U.S. Department of Homeland Security among defendants. It is the first lawsuit against the desert facility on the Fort Bliss military base and aims to improve conditions for its more than 2,700 detainees, the ACLU said in a statement.  A DHS spokesperson said claims there are inhumane conditions at the camp are categorically false.  A congressionally mandated inspection of the camp's temporary structures in February found 49 violations of detention standards, including 11 related to "use of force and restraints" and five related to "medical care."  "We’re suing to ensure that no other human being has to endure the inhumane treatment," said Kyle Virgien, an attorney for the National Prison Project of the ACLU, which filed the lawsuit together with Human Rights Watch and the Texas Civil Rights Project. According to the ACLU lawsuit, detainees are confined in windowless enclosures where they suffer physical abuse by guards, abhorrent medical and mental healthcare, indiscriminate use of solitary confinement and exposure to diseases such as measles and tuberculosis.  The DHS spokesperson said no detainees were being beaten, abused or denied medical care at the camp. The camp has no measles cases as of March 12 and there has been no spike in deaths in ICE custody under the Trump administration, the person said.  "ICE takes seriously the health and safety of all those detained in our custody," the spokesperson said in a statement, adding that ICE has higher detention standards than most U.S. prisons that hold U.S. citizens.  Venezuelan immigrant Erik Ivan Rodriguez, a named plaintiff in the lawsuit, said in a statement he experienced physical violence as officials tried to coerce him to sign deportation papers. Another plaintiff, Gerald Akari Angye from Cameroon, said he was beaten by guards.  The January 3 death of a Cuban immigrant at Camp East Montana was ruled a homicide by El Paso medical examiners, who cited "asphyxia due to neck and torso compression."  Immigration officials at first attributed Geraldo Lunas Campos' death to "medical distress." They later said he tried to take his life and died in a struggle with guards who attempted to save him.  The ACLU lawsuit alleged he was beaten to death after asking for his asthma medication. A fourth man died shortly after being released from the camp, where he had been denied chemotherapy for cancer, the complaint said.  U.S. immigration detention deaths reached a 20-year high in 2025 as the Trump administration ramped up the number of people held for alleged violations.  Reporting by Andrew Hay in New Mexico; Editing by Andrea Ricci

Summary: U.S. District Court denies preliminary injunction to California parks California Department of Parks cites irreparable harm at Gaviota State Park Sable Offshore pipeline project linked to Santa Ynez offshore platform A U.S. District Court on May 28 denied the California Department of Parks and Recreation’s bid to stop oil producer Sable Offshore Corp from moving oil on a long-disputed pipeline linked to the Santa Ynez offshore platform. The denial marks a setback for California’s efforts to stop the Santa Ynez project, which Sable restarted in March after the federal government’s intervention. For Sable, it marks a major win, sending the company’s shares up nearly 12 percent. • The Department of Parks and Recreation had sought preliminary injunctive relief, citing irreparable harm to it from the use of a section of Sable’s pipeline under the Gaviota State Park. • The U.S. District Court for the Central District of California said the department “manifestly failed to demonstrate that it will suffer irreparable harm in the absence of preliminary injunctive relief.” • California State Parks is disappointed by the court decision and will continue to challenge Sable’s “egregious trespass on public land”, a spokesperson said in a statement. • Several other legal challenges from various California state bodies, including a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Energy, continue to progress. Most are at preliminary stages, the district court noted in its May 28 order. (Reporting by Shariq Khan in New York; Editing by Rod Nickel and Rashmi Aich)

Summary: Biden files lawsuit in federal court in D.C. Justice Department plans June 15 release with limited redactions Recordings stem from 2016-2017 interviews with ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer  Former president Joe Biden sued the Justice Department on May 26, seeking to block the Trump administration from releasing the recordings and transcripts of his private interviews with a ghostwriter who was helping to write his memoir. The lawsuit argues that releasing the recordings would reflect an abandonment of the Justice Department’s “obligations to safeguard sensitive and highly personal law enforcement information.” The Justice Department informed Biden that it plans on June 15 to provide the material to a congressional committee and a conservative think tank that had filed a public records request, according to the lawsuit. The conversations Biden had with writer Mark Zwonitzer occurred in 2016 and 2017, in the years after Biden’s son Beau died of brain cancer and as he was contemplating a run for president. The Justice Department obtained the recordings during a 2023 special counsel investigation in which then-Attorney General Merrick Garland directed a probe into whether Biden, who had served as vice president from 2009 to 2017, mishandled classified materials in the years before he became president. Special counsel Robert K. Hur determined after an extensive investigation that while Biden carelessly handled sensitive material, no chargeable crime was committed. The current legal battle stems from a public records request lodged by the conservative Heritage Foundation in 2024 for those recorded conversations. They reportedly include Biden reading from notebooks chronicling his time in office that investigators determined contained classified information. The Justice Department, under Garland, had declined to release the recordings. At the time, according to the lawsuit, a department official opined that such a disclosure would be akin to “releasing the pages of an unindicted suspect’s diary entries, or the private text messages exchanged on the suspect’s phone - despite no charges having ever been brought.” The Heritage Foundation has continued to fight for the release of those recordings during the Trump administration, and in March, the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee also requested them. The Justice Department has said it plans to hand over the material with “limited redactions,” according to Biden’s attorneys. They contend that the decision to release the material is “capricious and arbitrary.” The lawsuit filed May 26 in federal court in D.C. accuses the Justice Department of suddenly reversing course from its Biden-era decision to block the release of the files. “Joe Biden’s Justice Department tried to hide audio recordings that clearly demonstrate a significant decline in his cognitive abilities as far back as 2016,” a Justice Department spokesman said in a statement May 27. “This is the most transparent Department of Justice in history, and we will fight to ensure the American people can hear these recordings and draw their own conclusions about the former President’s mental acuity before he sought the presidency.” The lawsuit alleges that the Justice Department is violating federal privacy laws and using what Biden’s lawyers described as a sham request from Congress as a way to circumvent federal laws around public records requests. Biden’s attorneys claim that there is no legislative reason for Congress to want the materials. The House Judiciary Committee has said that it wants the tapes as part of its oversight into the “politicization of the Biden-Garland Department of Justice.” “The Materials long predate the Special Counsel investigation over which the Committee purports to be conducting oversight and could not possibly shed light on the ‘politicization of the Biden-Garland Department of Justice’ - the Committee’s stated purpose,” the lawsuit states. The audio recording of Biden’s five-hour-plus interview with Hur was leaked to the media last year. Those tapes appeared to back Hur’s assertion that Biden would probably come across as an “an elderly man with a poor memory” if a case against him were brought to trial. (Reporting by Perry Stein, The Washington Post)