Federal immigration authorities have released five LGBTQ immigrants with compromised immune systems from two detention facilities in Arizona, including three people with HIV in response to the coronavirus pandemic, according to the advocacy group Trans Queer Pueblo.

At least two ICE detainees and one worker at a detention center have already tested positive for the new coronavirus.

The detainees were unloaded by ICE around midnight Monday at the Greyhound bus station in Phoenix, where they were met by representatives of Trans Queer Pueblo, said Stephanie Figgins Ramirez, a spokeswoman for the group.

Four of the detainees had been held at the La Palma Correctional Center and the fifth had been held at the Eloy Detention Center, Figgins Ramirez said. Both facilities are located in rural Arizona about an hour south of Phoenix.

ICE did not immediately confirm the release of the immigrants. But there has been an avalanche of calls from immigrant advocates and medical professionals for the agency to release immigration detainees, starting with the most vulnerable, amid fears the coronavirus could spread rapidly inside prison-like detention facilities with a history of providing inadequate medical care.

On Tuesday, detainees being held at the Mesa Verde Detention Center in Bakersfield and the Yuba County Jail filed a federal lawsuit demanding they be released because their advanced age and underlying medical conditions put them at particular risk of dying from the coronavirus, which causes the disease COVID-19.

The lawsuit was filed in federal court in San Francisco on their behalf by several civil liberties and civil rights groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Northern and Southern California.

A civil rights complaint filed Monday by a LGBTQ advocacy group with Department of Homeland Security officials demanded ICE release all immigration detainees with HIV, saying "grossly negligent HIV medical care" put them in "mortal danger" from the coronavirus.

A Salvadoran immigrant being held at the Hudson County Detention Center in New Jersey said detainees were participating in a hunger strike to try and obtain soap and toilet paper amid the pandemic, ProPublica reported.

On Monday, March 23, the Bergen County jail in New Jersey was put on lock down after a 31-year-old Mexican national in ICE custody tested positive for COVID-19, an infectious respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus that has been declared a global pandemic. It was the first time an immigrant detainee had tested positive for the disease.

Officials in Essex County, New Jersey, said Thursday that a 52-year-old immigration detainee who had been held at the Essex County Correctional Facility in Newark had tested positive for the coronavirus after being hospitalized with a medical condition, according to the USA TODAY Network.

ICE officials confirmed the information to The Arizona Republic.

ICE officials announced March 19 that a member of the medical administrative staff at the Elizabeth Detention Center in Elizabeth, New Jersey, also tested positive for COVID-19.

Figgins Ramirez praised ICE for releasing the five LGBTQ detainees. The group expected ICE to release another HIV positive immigrant being held at the La Palma facility on Wednesday, she said.

But Figgins Ramirez said ICE needs to release all detainees to help protect them from being infected by the coronavirus.

"The one-on-one approach won't work," she said. "ICE needs to release all detainees now and start with people who have chronic medical conditions."

She said the five LGBTQ detainees released Monday had been quarantined before their release because of their medical conditions, which she described as a "horrible experience" where "everyone is confined to their unit."

All five were released on humanitarian parole, which the agency rarely grants, she said.

"After such a hard experience, they were grateful to be out, but they are extremely worried about fellow migrants still detained inside because they know just how bad the medical conditions are and they know it’s basically a death sentence to be held in an ICE facility," she said.

The trans women, lesbian woman, and gay men who were released came to the U.S. seeking asylum, she said. They are from El Salvador, Guatemala, Cuba and Venezuela. Advocates who met them at the Greyhound bus station helped them buy bus tickets to travel to stay with family members in Texas, Florida, Iowa and Pennsylvania, she said.

ICE officials did not respond to repeated requests asking the agency to confirm the release of immigrants with compromised immune systems from facilities in Arizona.

In a previous statements, the agency said ICE takes seriously the health, safety and welfare of people in its custody including providing access to "necessary and appropriate medical care."

ICE has instituted screening guidance for new arrival detainees, including isolating detainees who meet U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance for a person under investigation for the virus and observing them for a period of time, the a separate statement said.

Reach the reporter at daniel.gonzalez@arizonarepublic.com or at 602-444-8312. Follow him on Twitter @azdangonzalez. Support local journalism. Subscribe to azcentral.com today.