JEFFERSON COUNTY – An immigrant rights group is threatening the federal government with another lawsuit if it returns detainees to a Southern Illinois jail without properly addressing human rights concerns.

The Heartland Alliance National Immigrant Justice Center has issued a warning to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that if it returns immigrants to the Jefferson County Justice Center in Mount Vernon, without taking “significant steps to ensure the jail complies with the U.S. Constitution and federal detention standards,” it will file suit.

Detainees were removed from the jail in 2012 after nearly all of the facility’s staff resigned.

Immigrant group officials said they documented reports of MRSA, tuberculosis, respiratory infections, and skin funguses among detainees in the weeks leading up to the exodus.

The group filed a lawsuit earlier this year challenging the validity of ICE’s contract with Jefferson County. A federal court in Northern Illinois dismissed the lawsuit, saying litigation was premature since ICE had yet to return detainees to the Mount Vernon facility.

Look for more on this story in Friday’s edition of The Southern Illinoisan.