Otay Mesa staff decried virus measures as outbreak grew

At the San Diego ICE detention center, masks were forbidden at first, workers say.

SAN DIEGO — Gregory Arnold walked into the warden’s office April 1 as the coronavirus ripped through one of the largest immigration detention centers in the United States. Waiting with about 40 guards to begin his shift, he heard a captain say that masks were prohibited.

Incredulous, Arnold and a guard who had recently given birth wanted to hear it from the boss. Arnold told Warden Christopher LaRose that he was 60 years old and lived with an asthmatic son.

“Well, you can’t wear the mask, because we don’t want to scare the employees, and we don’t want to scare the inmates and detainees,” Arnold recalled the warden saying.

“With all due respect, sir, that’s ridiculous,” Arnold retorted.

But the warden was unmoved. And in the weeks that followed, Otay Mesa Detention Center would see the first big outbreak among U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s 221 detention centers.

The origins of the outbreak are uncertain, but accounts of workers and detainees reveal shortcomings in how the private company that manages the center handled the disease: There was an early absence of facial coverings and a lack of cleaning supplies, and symptomatic detainees were mixed with others.

Other centers would follow with their own outbreaks, and a Homeland Security Department internal watchdog survey of 188 detention centers taken in mid-April echoed some of what the Associated Press found at Otay Mesa: 19% of facility directors said there weren’t enough standard surgical masks, 32% said there weren’t enough N95 respirator masks, and 37% felt there wasn’t enough hand sanitizer for detainees.

Otay Mesa sits on a tucked-away periphery of San Diego. The average daily population of 956 detainees last year made it ICE’s 11thbusiest detention center. The squat, two-story facility — managed under contract by CoreCivic Inc. and shared with U.S. Marshals Service inmates — is surrounded by two layers of chain-link fence topped by razor wire. Rooms with two to four bunk beds open into common areas with televisions, sofas and board games.

Margarita Smith, a guard, said managers frequently discouraged workers from wearing masks. The topic came up during briefings in March.

“They didn’t want anyone wearing masks,” said Smith. “They said it would frighten the detainees and make them think that we’re sick or something.”

In a court filing, LaRose, the warden, said policies on masks evolved with guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Workers were required to wear them around quarantined detainees; masks were optional for other employees starting the third week of March, he said — a statement that Arnold and Smith dispute.

Arnold said he wore a mask after learning March 31 about the detention center’s first case, an employee who handed out equipment to guards starting their shifts.

“I was disgusted,” Arnold said. “It’s obvious this thing was ramping up. I knew it was going to happen. I could just tell.”

On March 17, the day San Diego limited public gatherings to 50 people and closed restaurants, Otay Mesa staff gathered to grill the warden. Smith recalled wondering why so many people were allowed to meet in one room.

When an employee pressed for clean rags, the warden answered twice that there was no need, because the chemicals used for cleaning were very powerful. Others asked when they would get more wipes and gels.

Gloves were hard to find, Smith said. Arnold said the ones he saw were too small for his hands. Dispensers of hand sanitizer were often empty.

Feeling that the warden wasn’t taking the virus seriously, Smith, 48, felt she had no choice. She has asthma, had missed a week of work in early March with pneumonia and had been sick off and on since November. She quit.

“I thought to myself, I’m not going to get sick again,” she said. “I just had a feeling that things weren’t going to go good.”

CoreCivic spokeswoman Amanda Gilchrist said the contractor rigorously followed the guidance of health officials and ICE. She noted that the CDC didn’t fully embrace masks until the first week of April.

The virus has brought renewed scrutiny to ICE. The agency housed an all-time high of more than 56,000 people last year, but policies to severely limit asylum and recent releases aimed at controlling the virus reduced the population to 22,340. Overall, 3,596 ICE detainees have tested positive for COVID-19 — 27% of those tested. Of those, 967 are in custody; the rest were released, deported or have recovered.

Chad Wolf, acting Homeland Security secretary, told reporters in May that ICE stopped taking detainees at Otay Mesa and “one or two others” and will continue to release older and medically fragile detainees. ICE cut the population at Otay Mesa by more than half in three months, to 376 detainees from 761 on April 1. At the facility, 168 detainees have tested positive since the start of the outbreak, plus 11 ICE employees and more than 30 CoreCivic workers.

Arnold resigned after his April 1 confrontation with the warden. Smith took a two-week leave before resigning. Both have sued the company in federal court.

CoreCivic will address the former guards’ accounts in court, Gilchrist said, but “we can say generally that we deny their specious and sensationalized allegations that are designed to obtain a favorable outcome in court.”

Daniel Struck, an attorney for the warden, didn’t respond to a request for comment.