New Jersey has 1st ICE detainee to test positive for COVID-19
HACKENSACK, N.J. – The first federal immigration detainee in the U.S. tested positive for the coronavirus at a New Jersey jail, officials announced on Tuesday, spurring renewed warnings from advocates about the safety of those being held.
“People in detention centers are sitting ducks for the spread of this virus,” Andrea Flores, a deputy director of policy at the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement urging U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to set more detainees free.
“ICE must take immediate and drastic steps to reduce the number of people in detention. If it doesn’t, it will be to blame for a humanitarian crisis.”
The jail in Bergen County – the epicenter of the New Jersey outbreak – was put under lock down after the positive test, according to the county sheriff’s office. County officials said they would no longer accept more federal immigration detainees for the time being. ICE said intakes at the facility were suspended.
A spokesman for ICE, which pays Bergen and other county jails to house those accused of immigration violations, said the agency has been “actively working with state and local health partners” to see if any detainees require additional testing.
The 31-year old Mexican national who tested positive in Bergen County arrived the third week in February, said Sheriff Anthony Cureton.
That raises the likelihood that the detainee could have caught the virus while locked up. Studies have shown that a majority of those infected show symptoms within 14 days of being exposed.
“That could mean that other detainees have it as well,’’ said Rosa Santana, program coordinator for First Friends of New Jersey and New York, an advocacy group. “The setting of the jail is that there are dorms, and they are in open space.”
About 37,000 ICE detainees are being held nationwide, including about 1,200 at three county jails and a private facility in New Jersey. All four of those sites have reported a coronavirus case among either guards or inmates in recent days.
The Bergen detainee tested positive Monday at the Hackensack-Meridian Health University Medical Center after showing symptoms, said Derek Sands, a spokesman for Bergen County Sheriff Anthony Cureton.
The results will be sent to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for confirmation.
But the detainee, who has returned to the 1,150-bed jail, has already been quarantined and an isolation unit has been opened to house any more county inmates or immigration detainees who fall ill, Sands said.
Fifteen inmates and several corrections officers at the site had already been quarantined after another office tested positive last week.
Release immigrant detainees
The ACLU also called for the release of all detainees. saying that public health experts had been warning of the potential for the highly contagious virus to spread in detention facilities.
“Given the documented inadequacies of medical care and basic hygiene in immigration detention facilities, it is of vital importance for state public health authorities to address the statewide risk posed by crowded immigration detention facilities,” Amnesty International USA and two other humanrights groups wrote in a letter to governors and state health officials last week.
“One of the most critical steps you can take to immediately reduce the spread of COVID-19 is to utilize your public health and licensing authority” to release those held for ICE.
Sharon Lauchaire, a spokeswoman for the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office, said the state has no authority to force the release of federal detainees.
On Saturday, lawyers in New York also filed a lawsuit on behalf of seven immigrant detainees held in New Jersey, all with underlying health conditions. The suit demanded they be released in light of the coronavirus pandemic.
Emilio Dabul, a spokesman for ICE in Newark said in response that the agency regularly reviews the cases of detainees and that age and medical conditions are factors taken into account for “custody determination purposes.”
Santana said that some detainees in recent weeks have also told her via phone calls that they had colds, and were sneezing and had watery eyes. They have complained of dusty cells after recently being moved to the smaller units from larger dorms.
“Imagine now, we don’t know how many people will test positive,’’ she said. “They should be tested, that’s the right thing to do.”
On Tuesday, two detainees at the Bergen jail, who asked their names not be used because of fear it could affect their cases, said in a telephone interview that they were concerned about the potential for the virus to spread. Several of their fellow detainees have complained of headaches and fevers and have been coughing, they said.
As of last week, the county jail held 304 inmates and about 250 federal detainees, according to the Bergen County Sheriff ’s Office.
Detainees are kept in a separate wing and do not interact with the inmates.
The jail has intensified cleaning in recent weeks, distributed more hand sanitizer and soap and banned any visits involving physical contact, according to the sheriffs. The facility has a 24/7 medical staff and “is among the cleanest and most advanced facilities in the state with exceptional medical care,” the office said in a statement Tuesday.