Advocates have sued Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for the release of hundreds of immigrants from two California facilities, alleging in the class action lawsuit that when detained people recently held a hunger strike at one of the locations in protest of their ongoing detention during the novel coronavirus pandemic, officials threatened to cut off commissary access to shampoo, soap, and even food.
“While a federal district judge has ordered the release of some individuals in response to legal challenges,” the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Northern California said, “this is the first-class action filed on behalf of everyone detained at these two facilities.”
Detainees and advocates say crowded conditions at Mesa Verde Detention Facility and the Yuba County Jail make practicing safety guidelines like social distancing just about impossible.
“Immigrants at both of these facilities generally sleep in packed dormitory rooms on bunk beds bolted to the floor only a few feet from each other,” the ACLU said. “They use shared bathrooms, shoulder to shoulder with someone at the next sink and arm’s length from the next stall. They line up to get meals in crowded cafeterias, and are not provided resources for adequate sanitation and hygiene.”
“We are crammed together,” said Brenda, a detainee who actually won her case but is still jailed at Yuba because the government is appealing her case. “If there is an outbreak here, we will all catch it.” Others say officials haven’t even bothered to inform them of the bare minimum to stay safe. “I learned about ‘social distancing’ from watching the news in the detention center,” said Javier, another detainees who is being held at Mesa Verde.
Not that it matters, Javier cautioned: “Even if the authorities had told us about social distancing though, it doesn’t seem like there would be any way to practice social distancing here.”
The lawsuit notes the clear contempt officials have for immigrants under their watch, saying that staffers at the privately operated Mesa Verde facility mocked hunger strikers in addition to threatening to remove critical access to commissary items. “As one GEO employee stated, ‘I don’t know why you’re starving yourself when ICE doesn’t care what happens to you,’” the lawsuit said.
“Defendants’ actions were brazen, callous, and unconstitutional,” the lawsuit continued. “Plaintiffs were forced to choose between exercising their right to speech or maintaining their access to essential commissary items. Defendants’ actions had their desired chilling effect on plaintiffs’ exercise of their First Amendment rights. As a result of defendants’ retaliation, many plaintiffs stopped their hunger strike.”
A federal judge who this week ordered ordered ICE to “identify and track” all people “at heightened risk of severe illness and death upon contracting the COVID-19 virus” for possible release similarly blasted officials’ “callous indifference to the safety and wellbeing” of detainees. “At this stage of the pandemic, the threat is even clearer,” the judge wrote in the ruling. “The number of immigration detainees testing positive for COVID-19 continues to increase at an alarming rate.”
“Our clients are trapped,” said Bree Bernwanger of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, which joined with the ACLU of Northern California, the ACLU of Southern California, the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office, and law firms Lakin & Wille LLP and Cooley LLP to sue on behalf of detained people. “There is no question that the conditions of their detention are likely to cause a devastating outbreak, but ICE is refusing to do the one thing that could prevent it: release people.”
