A 55-year-old legal permanent resident from Trinidad and Tobago, Elton Purvis, is seeking $10 million from the Trump administration for alleged medical neglect and mistreatment while he was detained at a South Texas immigration detention center.
Background
Purvis, a father of nine U.S. citizen children and a Rastafarian priest with Type 1 diabetes, was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on May 13, 2025, at Boston Logan International Airport as he was returning home for two sons’ graduation ceremony. He had been suffering from malaria when he landed in Boston.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Foundation of Texas filed a tort claim on behalf of Purvis, which is part of a nationwide effort by the ACLU, filing more than 50 claims across 17 states and Washington, D.C., alleging that immigration officials and subcontractors neglected detained immigrants’ medical and food needs.
Purvis spent most of his seven months in detention at the South Texas Detention Complex in Pearsall, where staff repeatedly ignored his requests for help when he was experiencing medical emergencies, according to the ACLU claim.
Alleged Neglect
Purvis’s claim says ICE agents ignored his symptoms, including high fever, chills, and profuse sweating, for the first 12 days he was in custody before taking him to a Harlingen hospital for treatment of malaria. The claim also says ICE confiscated his prescription diabetes and malaria medication and didn’t allow him to take the medication.
At least three times, Purvis was found unresponsive by guards inside his detention cell, and at least three times, he was taken to the hospital because of dangerously low blood sugar levels. The claim says that on June 2, 2025, Purvis was taken to Valley Baptist Medical Center in Harlingen for emergency treatment of hyperglycemia and dehydration.
Purvis told staff that he followed a strict vegetarian diet as part of his religion and because he was allergic to eggs and lactose, but he also needed to eat regularly because of his diabetes. However, the staff gave him meals that included meat and told him they could not accommodate both his vegetarian and diabetic food requirements.
Response
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) referred all questions to the U.S. attorney’s office handling the case, citing pending litigation. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas declined to comment.
Original reporting: Texas Tribune (HLL/CB) — read the source article.
