Coronavirus: New lawsuit says conditions in immigrant detention center ripe for virus

Four to eight men sleep in bunk beds only a few feet apart from each other in cells as small as 8 by 10 feet. They share toilets and showers and eat at communal tables. They have little to no access to hand sanitizers, gloves or masks.

Those are the conditions faced by some 1,300 immigrant detainees at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in San Bernardino County, according to a federal lawsuit filed Tuesday, April 14 against federal immigration officials and the company that runs the detention center by the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California.

The ACLU lawyers, who hope the lawsuit will be certified as a class action representing all of the detainees, want the state’s largest immigrant detention center to implement social distancing, even if that requires the release of detainees to reduce crowding.

The case was filed on the heels of several court victories in similar actions filed by immigrant-rights advocates, including the ACLU and immigrant rights clinics at UCLA and UCI law schools.

Over the past two weeks, the federal court has ordered the release of at least two dozen individuals at Adelanto, according to the ACLU lawsuit. Six of those detainees, who have serious health issues and could die if they contract the coronavirus, were released April 2 in response to a lawsuit filed by the ACLU. Another two were released in response to petitions filed by the UCI Law Immigrant Rights Clinic.

Lawsuits targeting the Adelanto facility have been filed in Riverside but transferred to Judge Terry J. Hatter, a senior U.S. district judge in Los Angeles, said ACLU attorney Minju Cho. Hatter also was assigned to review ACLU’s latest lawsuit, she said.

The arguments in all the lawsuits are similar: conditions at the Adelanto facility are conducive to people getting the virus. One way to alleviate the problem, according to medical experts cited in the ACLU lawsuit, is to hold no more than one person per cell. Meeting that standard could require the release of about three-quarters of the facility’s detainees, Cho said.

In its lawsuit, ACLU suggests immigrants could be set free under a similar system to one being used in Massachusetts. There, detainees submit two-page forms that includes their biographical information, an address where they can shelter-in-place, their medical conditions and criminal history.

Immigrants held in facilities like Adelanto are civilian detainees who are waiting to go through the immigration process that will either lead to life in the U.S. or deportation to their home countries.  Attorneys argue that holding them there in conditions that could give them a potentially lethal disease violates their Constitutional due process protections.

Across the country, courts and prison systems have been releasing people who are incarcerated as a means to protect them and to reduce the overall spread of the virus.

In an e-mail Monday, an ICE spokeswoman said that the facility has not reported any positive cases of the disease, either among detainees or staff.

“ICE remains fully committed to ensuring that those in our custody reside in a safe, secure and clean environment, and that our staff and facility adhere strictly to the National Detention Standards. Anything contrary to that is simply false, and not reflective of the agency,” she wrote.

Detainees are being tested for COVID-19 in line with CDC guidance, according to ICE officials. That’s happening either at ICE detention facilities, with the test then processed at a commercial or public health lab, or in a local hospital, if the detainee requires more care.

ICE maintains it also is screening new detainees to identify those who may be at risk for the coronavirus and monitoring them for 14 days. The government agency is encouraging detention facilities to isolate new detaineees for 14 days before placing them with others.

But the ACLU lawsuit claims that Adelanto officials are “not generally testing” detainees for the virus. A recent government declaration stated that three detainees at the Adelanto facility were tested for the novel coronavirus and two others were tested at local hospitals after being transferred for unrelated issues, according to Cho, the ACLU attorney.

“Widespread testing is not available,” Cho said.