A group of Americans with family members stranded in the Gaza Strip sued President Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin on Thursday, saying they have deserted their relatives in the war-torn region and violated their constitutional rights.
In a federal lawsuit filed in the Northern District of Illinois, the plaintiffs say their family members have been deprived of “the normal and typical evacuation efforts the federal government extends to Americans who are not Palestinians.”
They say the federal government has violated their Fifth Amendment right to equal protection.
“Plaintiffs are United States citizens, legal permanent residents and immediate relatives of United States persons — stranded in Gaza and deprived of the standard efforts the United States government has always deployed to evacuate United States persons and their families from war zones,” the lawsuit read.
“Through this lawsuit, plaintiffs challenge the constitutionality of the federal government’s discriminatory practice of abandoning Americans of Palestinian national origin trapped in a war zone while promptly evacuating and acting to protect similarly situated Americans of different national origins from the same war zone,” the complaint stated.
A spokesperson for the Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The lawsuit was filed by the Council of American-Islamic Relations, which is helping to represent the plaintiffs.
They say federal law establishes a duty to evacuate and that the government moved quickly to evacuate Israelis. They point to other examples where the government mobilized quickly to rescue people in Afghanistan, Lebanon, Sudan and Libya when conflicts broke out over the past several years.
The lawsuit asks the court to order the Biden administration to launch emergency efforts to rescue their relatives.
It is the second lawsuit filed this week over citizens stuck in Gaza, according to Reuters. On Tuesday, Palestinian families sued over America’s military support for Israel.