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While coronavirus infections in New York City’s largest jail have skyrocketed to nearly 10 times the rate of the city’s residents overall — according to one legal organization’s analysis — a grassroots crowdfunding campaign has been bailing out the Rikers Island inmates.

The Emergency Release Fund, a group of organizers and activists in New York, has raised $18,000 since March 23 and freed five inmates in the last three days, Alex Tereshonkova, a member of the group, told BuzzFeed News on Monday. The average donation is $20.

“They haven't been convicted of crimes,” said Tereshonkova, who pointed out that the inmates eligible for cash bail still have yet to receive a court trial. This month, New York suspended new trials indefinitely. “These people being detained are innocent until proven guilty. They have the same right to live that we do.”

Tereshonkova said inmates eligible for bail face charges ranging from parole violations, such as breaking a curfew, to more serious offenses like robberies — but they now wait in limbo, many of them sharing cells, as the virus closes in around them.

Founded in September, the Emergency Release Fund had originally focused on freeing transgender inmates, who historically have endured higher rates of violence and sexual assault behind bars. That focus has expanded during the pandemic, said Tereshonkova, to prioritize LGBTQ people and people of color, and now, to free anyone else at Rikers Island who qualifies for cash bail. “At this point, we are doing everybody.”

On Monday, news spread that Lorena Borjas, a transgender woman whose activism included ending cash bail in New York City, had died from complications from COVID-19, the disease caused by coronavirus.