The lawsuit – filed by the University of Miami’s immigration law clinic, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Rapid Defense Network in New York, the Legal Aid Service of Broward County and Prada Urizar, a private Miami law firm against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Attorney General – seeks the release of detainees in three South Florida detention centers, citing health experts who say the practice of “cohorting” — segregating affected inmates in separate areas — is actually spreading the coronavirus “like wildfire” among detainees and staff.

ICE “directly contradicts [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] guidance in several ways, including, most critically, that ICE officials describe cohorting as the planned response to a known COVID-19 exposure, not a practice of last resort,” said Joseph Shin, an assistant professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine, a founding member of the Cornell Center for Health Equity, and past medical director for the Weill Cornell Center for Human Rights, in a sworn statement that is part of the lawsuit.

Shin mentions ICE’s lack of planning, saying the agency should place detainees suspected of having the coronavirus in individual medical isolation units in which “each isolated individual should be assigned their own housing space and bathroom,” per CDC guidelines.

“In these settings, hundreds, and potentially thousands of people will become infected, and many will die,” Shin said.

The lawsuit, which seeks the release of detainees at the Krome Processing Center in Miami-Dade, the Broward Transitional Center in Pompano Beach and the Glades County Detention Center in Moore Haven, was filed less than a week after a healthy Krome detention center inmate, with no underlying health conditions, was released by ICE.

The Jamaican national’s release came after his lawyers argued that he was in “imminent danger” by continuing to be held inside the detention center with no ability to social distance or to have access to personal protective equipment while ICE continues to book new inmates, crowd dormitories and group hundreds of sick inmates together.

Miami U.S. District Judge Kathleen M. Williams ordered ICE to explain what the federal agency is doing to protect detainees inside from catching or spreading the virus. The case was ultimately dismissed after ICE released the detainee, Boyd Campbell, and submitted a sworn statement by Liana J. Castano, the acting director in charge of the Krome facility.

In her statement last Wednesday Castano noted that at the time, at least 238 detainees had been grouped together in an isolated area. Each of the detainees were confirmed to have been exposed to someone who has tested positive for the coronavirus.

Castano explained that the agency has medical and mental healthcare staffers on site and that all detainees coming into the facility are having their temperature taken by security guards before being admitted. Detainees are also being asked if they have traveled to a COVID-19 hot spot in the past 14 days, and if they’ve had any contact with anyone that has tested positive.

If the answer is yes, the detainee is isolated for 14 days with others who also answered yes, a practice that the agency calls “cohorting.” Sick detainees with coronavirus symptoms are not being tested, according to Krome employees and detainees interviewed by the Miami Herald.

“I’m in so much pain, I barely have breath in my chest and my throat hurt,” Francisco Fuentes, a Honduran national at Krome, told the Herald. He said he has been feeling ill for days and still won’t be administered a coronavirus test. “I’m sorry I’m crying but my bones and my body aches, I feel faint and my fever is burning. Please help me.”

The chances of detainees being tested for coronavirus inside the Florida detention centers are slim, federal sources say. “The only way someone will get tested is if they’re over 65 or basically dying,” one ICE prosecutor said.

As of Monday, at least two detainees and two security guards at Krome have tested positive for the coronavirus. Federal sources told the Miami Herald that an additional 60 officers have been sent home, many of them waiting for virus test results. A few detainees out of the facility’s roughly 600 are also waiting test results inside Krome.

“I was taken to the hospital on Thursday and tested for coronavirus,” one detainee told the Herald Monday . “The nurse told me my test was the one that gave results within 24 hours. It’s been almost five days and I still haven’t been told anything about my health.”

The detainee, who is in medical isolation, has been barred from having family or friends deposit funds into his commissary via debit or credit cards. His account has been locked to only accept cash. All the while, detention centers are closed to visitors during the pandemic.

“So how is someone supposed to deposit money if they only accept cash and you can’t physically go deposit the funds?” said Bud Conlin, director of Friends of Miami-Dade Detainees, a Krome visitation program that for years has deposited funds into detainee accounts. “The fact that this person is being denied the opportunity to speak with friends, family, and counsel is deeply disturbing.”

For about a month, ICE has published on its website the number of confirmed coronavirus cases for its detainees and federal employees nationwide. As of Monday morning, 61 detainees and 19 ICE detention-center employees nationwide have tested positive for the virus.

However, those numbers do not reflect the number of third-party contractors who work at ICE facilities who have tested positive for COVID-19; ICE data shows that at least 217 of ICE’s 222 detention centers nationwide are operated by third parties .

ICE’s website also doesn’t mention how many people at its facilities have been tested or are being monitored for the virus because that “isn’t something we have to provide,” the agency has told the Herald.

In recent weeks, sources say that staffing has been so short at Krome that guards have had to switch to 12-hour shifts, and some officers awaiting COVID-19 test results are still going to work, according to a federal source familiar with conditions inside the facility.

Rebecca Sharpless, director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Miami, said the Jamaican national’s successful release from Krome set the stage for all the others in South Florida, and “hopefully” across the country.

“The release of [that detainee] shows that ICE knows it can and should release all others,” Sharpless told the Herald. “The house is on fire and it’s time to get the people out.”

Federal judges across the country have ordered the urgent release of detainees, saying the pressing health risks created by detaining groups of people during the pandemic.

As recently as last week, a federal judge in Massachusetts ordered ICE to release more than 40 detained individuals because of the COVID-19 threat, calling the “the situation...urgent and unprecedented,” noting that “a reduction in the number of people who are held in custody is necessary.”

Each of the three South Florida detention centers has either confirmed cases of the virus or has groups of individuals herded together in “cohort quarantine” because they have been identified by staff as being exposed to the virus.

Under CDC Guidelines — which detention centers are required to follow — people exposed to COVID-19 should be put in individual, not group, quarantine: “Facilities should make every possible effort to quarantine close contacts of COVID-19 cases individually.”

Cohort quarantine “should only be practiced if there are no other available options.” The CDC says “cohorting multiple quarantined close contacts of a COVID-19 case could transmit COVID-19 from those who are infected to those who are uninfected.”

Facilities without onsite healthcare capacity, or without sufficient space to carry out “effective quarantine, should coordinate with local public health officials to ensure that close contacts of COVID-19 cases [and suspected cases] will be effectively quarantined and medically monitored,” the CDC says on its website.

In recent weeks, the World Health Organization has urged governments to consider “resorting to non-custodial measures at all stages of the administration of criminal justice, including at the pre-trial, trial and sentencing as well as post-sentencing stages.”

“There is currently no way for Krome, Glades, and BTC to comply with CDC guidelines on social distancing and quarantining,” the federal lawsuit says. “Each facility holds individuals in close proximity. People are less than six feet away from each other when they sleep, eat, and use common areas. It is impossible for [detainees] to protect themselves from infection through social distancing and vigilant hygiene — the only known mitigation measures.”

Though federal immigration officials have said ICE would curtail arrests of non-criminalsduring the coronavirus pandemic, new non-criminal migrants are still being picked up and taken to Krome, Glades, and BTC without being tested for COVID-19, two federal ICE prosecutors confirmed to the Herald.

According to sources inside Miami-Dade and Broward County Corrections, ICE is also continuing to issue ”detainers” to local jails, directing them to hold undocumented immigrants whose criminal custody has come to an end. ICE then transports these people to Krome, Glades, and BTC, increasing their already large populations.

In a sworn declaration filed with the lawsuit, Miami’s Dr. Pedro “Joe” Greer, associate dean of Florida International University’s Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine, says “continued and wide-spread infection will not only occur in the detention facilities but also in the community.

“When release from a detained setting is an option and there is lack of testing ability and an inability to employ social distancing, it is my professional opinion that failure to release during the COVID-19 pandemic is a violation of the CDC guidelines and will result in continued and widespread infection,” Greer said. “Protecting the health of individuals who are detained in and work in these facilities is vital to protecting the health of the wider community.”

Dr. Ashish Jha, director of Harvard’s Global Health Institute, told the Miami Herald last week that “the basic principle of public health is that you want to separate people who are infected from people who are not infected.”

“The only way you know that is by testing them,” he said. “If you cohort people together, you are basically assigning people to get infected.”

After this article was published, one of the detainees that tested positive for COVID-19 is expected to be released by ICE, according to his legal counsel.

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