BROWNSVILLE — California dentist and attorney Orly Taitz is challenging the transfer of undocumented immigrants from South Texas to other states, saying they would spread epidemics of scabies, tuberculosis, measles, whooping cough, swine flu, dengue fever, Ebola virus and lice.

Taitz filed the lawsuit July 14 in federal court, naming President Barack Obama, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell and the Rio Grande Valley Sector of the U.S. Border Patrol.

She is seeking to stop what she called the “dumping” of undocumented immigrants on unsuspecting populations in California and other areas in the country.

The lawsuit claims the transfers would cause economic damage and pose serious threats to national security and public health and safety and spread infectious diseases.

She seeks either the immediate deportation of undocumented immigrants or a two-month quarantine of them in an enclosed temporary or permanent Federal Emergency Management Agency facility.

Taitz also is an activist in the Birther movement. Her biography states that she is well known throughout the country, and she claims to have “exposed” Obama’s “illegitimacy to the U.S. presidency.”

She also is the president of Defend Our Freedoms Foundation.

Presiding U.S. District Judge Andrew S. Hanen ordered the defendants to respond to Taitz’s request for an emergency stay or injunction by Aug. 11.

“The court will consider the reply and the application and either rule or schedule the matter for hearing,” Hanen wrote in an Aug. 1 order.

Hanen also directed the government’s attorney to notify the California Attorney General’s Office about the lawsuit and deadlines so that it may participate, if it desires.

U.S. Department of Justice attorney Colin A. Kisor referred questions about the lawsuit to his office’s public affairs department.

Taitz also is seeking a stay of the release of undocumented immigrants who did not complete a two-month quarantine before they are released into communities. Her lawsuit also would require the undocumented immigrants to undergo medical screening, obtain a medical release, prove a clean criminal record in their native countries, and obtain an order from a federal judge regarding immigration status before they are released.

She also wants Hanen to provide evidence presented in the case to a federal grand jury to prosecute the president and others for criminal offenses, including conspiracy, racketeering, human trafficking and treason.

“This is nothing short of an orchestrated invasion, perpetrated to supply cheap labor for a group of billionaires and flagrantly rob American citizens of their jobs, wages and benefits and expose them to epidemics of infectious diseases and crime,” Taitz claims.

“As if this weren’t bad enough, the invasion is also supplying the nation’s most dangerous street gangs with new soldiers,” she further charged, claiming that gangs are on a “recruiting frenzy” at facilities housing the undocumented immigrants.

In her lawsuit, Taitz referred to an order Hanen entered in December 2013 in an unrelated case, United States of America vs. Mirtha Veronica Nava-Martinez, who was convicted of attempting to smuggle a 10-year-old girl from El Salvador.

Court records show that the girl’s mother Salmeron Santos, an undocumented immigrant, admitted that she had hired smugglers to transfer her child from El Salvador to Virginia and paid a $6,000 advance for the service. DHS delivered the child to her mother.

“‘This court is quite concerned with the apparent policy of the Department of Homeland Security … of completing the criminal mission of individuals who are violating the border security of the United States … The DHS, instead of enforcing our border security laws, actually assisted the criminal conspiracy in achieving its illegal goals,’” Taitz quoted from Hanen’s order in the that case.

Regarding Taitz’s allegations, Michael Seifert of the RGV Equal Voice Network said: “The lawsuit filed by the dentist from California is another example of a misplaced and exaggerated fear. From all public evidence, the authorities in charge of the children have gone overboard in assuring that the children offer no public health threat to others.

“To the contrary, a more appropriate lawsuit would be on the behalf of these children, to assure that they have access to the finest therapy to help them recover from the horrors that made them leave the place that they had called home,” Seifert added.

eperez-trevino@valleystar.com