As most of the country remains in lockdown to curb the spread of coronavirus, nearly 150 immigrants are fearing for their safety as they fight for their release from a North Dartmouth, Massachusetts, detention facility.
Immigrant detainees in Massachusetts are fighting to be released in the pandemic
“Everyone deserves the opportunity to survive this,” one advocate said.
Nicole Narea covers politics Vox. She first joined Vox in 2019, and her work has also appeared in Politico, Washington Monthly, and the New Republic.
From the few hours of television news they can watch each day, the detainees have learned that social distancing, along with proper sanitation, is the only way that they can protect themselves from infection. But that’s all but impossible at the Bristol County Correctional Center, where the detainees are held together in tight quarters without the protective equipment or sanitation resources necessary to protect themselves, they argue in a class action lawsuit.
They are among the 38,000 immigrants in detention across more than 130 private and state-run detention facilities nationwide. As of April 7, 19 detainees across 11 different facilities had tested positive for the virus — none of them in Bristol, though advocates say it’s only a matter of time before it hits or testing rates improve.
Only after outcry from immigrant advocates did US Immigration and Customs Enforcement recently institute national policies encouraging social distancing in its facilities and provide soap, hand sanitizer, cleaning supplies, and personal protective equipment. The agency also announced Tuesday that it would start releasing detainees who are medically vulnerable to Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus; it has released 60 so far and has identified another 600 who would qualify.
But that’s only a fraction of the detainees nationwide. Unless the agency starts releasing detainees by the thousands, that means most will remain in confinement, despite the fact that they largely have no criminal history. There is, therefore, a national advocacy push for the administration to alter its enforcement priorities to release all detainees, or at least those who haven’t committed serious crimes; while immigrant advocates campaign for their release even in the best of times, their message has become even more urgent amid the outbreak.
In the meantime, those at Bristol remain in conditions that they fear could facilitate the spread of the virus, which can be carried by those who don’t exhibit symptoms.
For the more than 30 detainees with underlying medical conditions that make them vulnerable to complications from Covid-19, it’s an especially scary situation. So far, only 18 detainees have been ordered released as part of the lawsuit, and not all of them qualify as high-risk.
“We suffer from being separated from our families and loved ones,” 47 detainees wrote in a March 20 declaration. “To add on top of this, we are now living in fear.”
The conditions inside Bristol
As of April 9, there are over 16,700 coronavirus cases throughout Massachusetts, including in the Bristol facility: A health care provider in the facility has tested positive, according to county officials, and the detainees claim that two correctional officers showed up for work with symptoms of the virus, including high fever.
Nevertheless, Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson has argued that freeing the detainees would only put them and the public at greater risk. He claims there isn’t an adequate social safety net right now to facilitate detainees’ return to society and they would receive better health care in custody than they would in the outside world.
“I’m deeply troubled by elected officials suggesting that we release inmates because of Coronavirus,” he tweeted. “This would present a huge public safety and public health risk to the community and the inmates themselves.”
The detainees maintain that they can’t protect themselves from the virus inside Bristol. While the facility is operating at just below its normal capacity, Bristol is housing far too many detainees to be able to enforce social distancing. ICE has nevertheless continued to place new detainees at Bristol — and at least on one occasion, without even administering an initial medical checkup, potentially exposing the rest of the detainees to the virus.
The detainees’ living quarters are largely an open plan with no real privacy: Their bunk beds are spaced just three feet apart and the dining tables just inches, far from the minimum six feet of distance recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They share a small, poorly ventilated room where they watch movies, access the computer, and hold religious services. Correctional officers have started telling detainees to take their food trays back to their beds to eat, but even then, they’re still in close proximity.
Detainees who exhibit symptoms of the virus have been put into solitary confinement without adequate medical care, Vanesa Suarez, a deportation defense organizer at the Connecticut Bail Fund, said. While corrections officers and health professionals wear face masks and gloves in the solitary confinement area, where they might come into contact with people who could be infected, they don’t wear the same protective equipment in other areas of the building and could potentially expose other detainees.
The detainees also have little resources to practice good hygiene. At the outset of the lawsuit, which was filed in mid-March, multiple showers and urinals were out of order. Detainees tasked with cleaning their quarters don’t have access to bleach or other disinfectants — just diluted soap. The facility has started wiping down hard surfaces where the virus can survive for days and providing hand sanitizer, but that’s little comfort when the disease can so easily spread through respiratory droplets, which are expelled through coughing, sneezing, and even breathing.
What’s more, correctional officers haven’t seemed to appreciate the severity of the threat of the virus, telling detainees that it is “nothing more than the flu” and communicating little information about how they can help prevent its spread.
Some detainees have organized a work strike in protest of the conditions. The lead organizer was temporarily placed in solitary confinement, where he was unable to communicate with the lawyers working on the detainees’ lawsuit. (His lawyers claim his placement in solitary was retaliatory, though the county disputes it.) Others remain afraid to speak out, Suarez said.
“Everyone is very much afraid of being punished for speaking out, but they’re also very aware that their silence will lead to their deaths,” she said. “Speaking out has always been a fear that those in incarceration have, and for people who also have a pending immigration case, it’s so terrifying how much they’re putting at risk.”
Why detainees are asking to be released
These immigrants aren’t in detention because they’ve been charged with a crime; rather, they’re accused of civil immigration violations, such as overstaying a visa or residing in the US without authorization, and they have been detained while they wait for the outcome of their deportation cases. Some may well be allowed to remain in the US eventually, depending on what an immigration judge decides.
The federal government has significant discretion to determine who it subjects to this kind of civil detention. Toward the end of Barack Obama’s presidency, he prioritized only those immigrants who had a record of committing serious crimes, releasing others into the interior of the US. Under that system, most of the immigrants in detention at Bristol would have been released: Among the 147 detainees, at least 111 of them have never been convicted of a violent crime, and 56 have never been convicted of a crime at all, according to Lawyers for Civil Rights, the legal aid group representing the detainees in court.
But President Donald Trump, by contrast, has sought to detain any unauthorized immigrants anywhere in the US — even amid the pandemic.
Lawmakers and advocates have been calling for their release, especially for detainees who are older or have underlying health conditions that make them more susceptible to the virus, including those with compromised immune systems, diabetes, and heart disease.
“Although ICE has released a small number of detainees suffering from autoimmune disorders in places where detainees have tested positive, more must be done,” Democratic Reps. Jerrold Nadler and Zoe Lofgren wrote in an April 7 letter. “ICE should release certain detainees—those who pose no threat to public safety or national security—on their own recognizance or into alternatives to detention.”
The American Civil Liberties Union and the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project have already sued ICE to seek the release of vulnerable detainees at one detention center in Tacoma, Washington, just outside Seattle, the epicenter of the US’s first outbreak of Covid-19.
But the detainees in Bristol are going even further, calling for the release of all detainees in a first-of-its-kind class-action lawsuit. Unlike in other cases, the judge has ordered the humanitarian release of immigrants who don’t have medical risk factors.
“We don’t have control over a lot of things right now, but we do have control over who we choose to protect,” Suarez said. “What we’re asking for is that we do protect the lives of those who are incarcerated. Everyone deserves the opportunity to survive this.”
