Immigrants decry ICE conditions
Every day before his afternoon infirmary appointment at a Houston immigrant dentention center, Juan Carlos Hernández anticipated that his blood glucose test was going to be more than twice as high as medically safe.
He said he cannot keep his diabetes in check with the food served at the Houston Contract Detention Facility, meals oversaturated with sugars and starches. As a diabetic, he is among the populations with health issues that make him vulnerable to the novel coronavirus. More than 100 immigrants at the facility, about one-third of the detainees there, and two employees have tested positive.
“I am afraid. … I feel I am going to die here,” said Hernández, his voice breaking up over the phone in a recent interview.
As COVID-19 cases continue to grow across the state and the nation, most of the attention about how the virus has impacted the incar
cerated has focused on outbreaks in local jails and state prisons. Federal lockups under Immigration and Customs Enforcement responsibility, such as the Houston facility, have come under scrutiny by the courts, as well as lawmakers who have criticized how the agency is dealing with the pandemic.
The contract center has reported the highest number of infections among the four detention centers that fall within ICE’s jurisdiction in the Houston area. It is also one of more than a dozen facilities in the country a federal judge in California ordered in April to identify and track all detainees with risk factors and consider their release. A group of immigrants sued ICE and the government for what Judge Jesus Bernal characterized as the agency’s “callous indifference” in handling health concerns.
ICE cases spike
At the Houston facility, for example, the judge noted that detainees were required to mop and sweep without gloves or protective equipment. Social distancing was impossible in dorms holding 40 detainees sleeping in bunk beds 4 feet apart.
The suit also named the Joe Corley Detention Center in Conroe, documenting reports of crowded barracks and people sick with flulike symptoms not receiving medical care. ICE has reported 42 COVID cases there, and officers said it has 272 detainees.
At the Montgomery Detention Center, cases have more than doubled in a week, spiking from 55 on June 9 to 115 on June 16, among a total population of 445 detainees. At IAH Polk Adult Detention Facility in Livingston, 16 cases were reported this week among its 143 immigrants.
ICE officers said the agency has tested about 450 detainees in the four facilities. The detention centers account for just under 40 percent of all cases confirmed in Texas from about a dozen ICE facilities.
As confirmed cases grow, lawyers and advocates for the immigrants say ICE is denying or delaying requests for compassionate release for those with health issues. They also said families fear their loved ones with compromised health will be infected.
“Releases are not happening unless you request a review of a case, and even then, they are rarely granted,” said Carolina Ortuzar-Diaz, an attorney with the immigration law firm Monty and Ramirez in Houston. She also said ICE is taking an undue amount of time to process cases.
Sofia Casini, director of visitation strategies at Freedom for Immigrants, an advocacy and research nonprofit, said her organization’s hotline has been receiving numerous calls from detainees. She said unsanitary conditions in detention facilities are prone to contagion.
“It is impossible to control a virus or social distance in those conditions,” she said.
ICE announced earlier this year that the agency released about 900 detainees deemed to be at risk of coronavirus complications. The agency said it continues reviewing the detainee population for potential releases, taking into account factors such as immigration history and criminal record.
“Allegations that ICE is rejecting or delaying requests for humanitarian release without adequate justification are false,” the agency responded in a written comment.
‘I suffocate’
At Unit B-15 in the Houston contract center, immigrants who spoke with the Chronicle said the 40 men there have to share three toilets and three showers. They eat next to each other and, while ICE has provided fabric masks, their use is not enforced.
Hernández, a native Honduran, requested humanitarian release because of his health and said he has written letters to immigration authorities.
“Nobody listens to me … please help me,” begged the 36-year-old man, who was initially detained in California, where his wife and three children live. He has been held for 10 months, and was transferred to Houston in March while appealing his request for asylum.
Eric Solórzano, a Salvadoran detained at the Houston facility, is also diabetic and fears infection.
“I am distraught. I feel that my health is going to get worse, and I’m scared,” Solórzano said in a video chat. “I cry, I feel very lonely here. I am a good person, I am not a bad person.” He has been in ICE custody for eight months while appealing his request for asylum.
Solórzano is skeptical about getting any help to be released. He thinks he is a good candidate for release but said he hasn’t seen any signal of interest in his case and doesn’t know how to get a lawyer.
Rolando Galdámez held up a sign that read “SOS COVID-19.” The 36-year-old Salvadoran is detained while he tries to advance a court process to prove he is a legal resident. He said he learned that a request made by his American parents 20 years ago was granted but got lost in bureaucratic limbo.
After more than half a year in confinement, Galdámez, said his mental health is deteriorating.
“I feel like I can’t breathe,” he said, “that everything is darkening and that the entire ceiling and the walls fall on me. I suffocate.”
Many in federal detention facilities are held while waiting for their hearings before immigration courts, sometimes for years. Others are in the process of being deported. Of those with criminal records, many are the result of soaring increases of criminal arrests and convictions for immigration offenses during the Trump administration. They more than doubled in his first year, data from the Pew Research Center shows.
Their concerns and pleas for help are leading to protests at facilities around the nation.
Detainees at the Port Isabel Detention Center in the Rio Grande Valley went on a hunger strike this month, and similar actions have happened in other facilities in the country.
‘Life is difficult’
Advocates recognize that detention centers are now less crowded.
The population in ICE custody has dropped from 38,500 to 28,870 over a two-month period that began in early March. Officers said the decline is mostly the result of temporary suspension of raids and other operations, and a dramatic drop in illegal border crossing during the pandemic.
Still, for immigrants such as Wilson Márquez-López, the only counts that matter are coronavirus infections and the risk to become the virus next victim at the Houston contract center.
Seated in a wheelchair during a video chat, the 27-year-old Salvadoran man said that he was kidnapped for ransom by gang members in Mexico on his way to the U.S. Unable to pay, he said he was thrown under a train known as La Bestia and lost his legs.
“I hope I will win my appeal for asylum,” Márquez-López said, knowing the process can take months or years.
Hernández, on the other hand, might be the lucky one among his peers. He said that, over a week ago, a lawyer told him that he may be released.
Hernández’s daughter, Lourdes, 14, said her dad cries whenever he hears her and their family on the phone from detention.
“I really miss my dad. All our lives we have been together,” the girl said. “Life is difficult with him locked up.”