Coronavirus lawsuit: Conditions for immigrant detainees in Adelanto ‘ideal’ for disease

Coronavirus lawsuit: Conditions for immigrant detainees in Adelanto ‘ideal’ for disease

by Roxana Kopetman

Conditions in the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in San Bernardino County – including inadequate sanitation and beds placed too close together – provide an “ideal incubation” opportunity for coronavirus, according to a federal lawsuit filed Monday by six immigrant detainees currently being held in the center.

The immigrants, detained because of their immigration status, all suffer from underlying medical conditions, including HIV infection, congestive heart failure, asthma and diabetes. Those health problems, they argue, make them “highly vulnerable to serious illness and death” from the novel coronavirus, according to the lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California.

The legal action against officials with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and the Adelanto facility seeks the immediate release of the six detainees. Meanwhile, immigrant-rights advocates in Southern California and across the country have called for the release of all immigrants being held in civil detention.

In the ACLU lawsuit filed in federal court in Los Angeles, attorneys argue that conditions in Adelanto haven’t been changed to accommodate the pandemic.

“Clustering vulnerable individuals under these circumstances and waiting for COVID-19 to explode at Adelanto creates not only a humanitarian crisis, but also a constitutional one,” ACLU attorneys wrote in the lawsuit.

Detainees have not been given hand sanitizer, gloves or masks, “nor have they been instructed about the need for social distancing,” the lawsuit alleges. The ACLU also says detainees aren’t being tested, and their temperatures aren’t being monitored.

Keeping the six immigrants detained in such conditions, the lawsuit argues, violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of “cruel and unusual punishments” and the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of due process that prevents the government from exposing civil detainees to risk of serious illness and death.

An ICE spokeswoman on Monday declined comment, saying her agency does not discuss pending litigation.

The detainees named in the lawsuit are Jose Robles Rodriguez, of Guatemala, Charleston Edward Dacoff, of Belize, Jose Hernandez Velasquez, of Guatemala, Luis Lopez Salgado, of Mexico, Paola Rayon Vite, of Mexico, and Martin Vargas Arellano, of Mexico.

Conditions at the Adelanto facility, operated by the private GEO Group, have been questioned repeatedly, prior to the pandemic, by various agencies and federal inspectors.

The lawsuit filed Monday in Los Angeles is the fifth health-related legal action in the past two weeks to target immigration detention facilities around the country, said Eunice Cho, senior staff attorney at the ACLU’s National Prison Project.

“Public health officials have consistently instructed us all that reducing the number of people held in immigrant detention centers  — as well as jails, prisons, and other similar facilities — is a critical step to avoiding a humanitarian disaster from COVID-19,” Cho said.

“ICE must do its part to flatten the curve by releasing people from its custody, starting with the most vulnerable to serious illness or death.”

Last week, more than 50 organizations and immigrant-rights advocates sent a letter to Orange County’s congressional delegation urging the legislators to seek the release of immigrant detainees. The signers include the UC Irvine Law School Immigrant Rights Clinic and non-profits like Orange County Justice Fund and the Long Beach Immigrant Rights Coalition.

On March 24, an immigrant being held in a New Jersey jail is believed to be the first detainee to test positive for coronavirus. According to the lawsuit filed Monday, an internal ICE report says that “as of March 19, 2020, ICE’s Health Services Corps had isolated nine detainees and it was monitoring 24 more in ten different ICE facilities, and 1,444 officials with ICE and DHS were in precautiounary self-quarantine.” On its website, ICE reports four cases at three different facilities in New Jersey, as of Monday, March 30.

Last week, Amnesty International USA, a civil rights organization, also called on governors and state health officials to pressure the federal government to release immigrant detainees.

All credit goes to Roxana Kopetman
Originally published on https://www.dailynews.com