By Andrea Castillo and Brittny Mejia
For weeks, as the coronavirus spread, Jose Hernandez Velasquez worried about the dangers of being detained inside the Adelanto ICE Processing Center 80 miles east of Los Angeles.
The 19-year-old Guatemalan immigrant listened uneasily as other men called their families, begging them to do everything possible to get them released so as to reduce their odds of contracting the deadly illness.
Ultimately, in light of the pandemic, a federal judge ordered immigration authorities to release Hernandez, an asylum seeker with hypertension who had spent nearly 21/2 years at the facility. When a guard came to tell him the news, Hernandez was speechless. Other detainees burst into applause.
“I was really worried,” he said in a phone call after his release. “It was so difficult to be inside.”
As an increasing number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees across the country test positive for COVID-19, California lawyers are working to free as many clients as they can by invoking constitutional rights and arguing on humanitarian grounds. In the last two weeks, U.S. District Judge Terry Hatter Jr. ordered at least 10 people released from Adelanto, one of the country’s largest detention centers, holding nearly 2,000 people.
It’s unclear how many detainees have been released nationwide because of coronavirus concerns. In recent weeks, federal judges across the country have ordered the release of more than 40 detainees.
Like Hernandez, most have been released after lawyers petitioned federal courts on their behalf. Others have been released on bond or through humanitarian parole, which is free to people with a compelling emergency.
In response to the pandemic, ICE has instructed field offices to assess and consider for release those deemed to be at greater risk of exposure, reviewing cases of individuals age 60 and older, as well as those who are pregnant.
In court filings, ICE has argued that concern about detainees contracting COVID-19 is “based on mere speculation” and that releasing large numbers of them would set a precedent that would persist even after the virus subsides.
Until ICE agrees to release more detainees, “you’re going to keep seeing petitions like this,” said Jessica Bansal, senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, which got Hernandez and others released from Adelanto. “Because people need to get out.”
The ACLU has sued ICE facilities in multiple states over coronavirus concerns.
Late last month, the Southern Poverty Law Center and other groups filed an emergency request for the release of tens of thousands of people in ICE custody if the agency “cannot or will not take the steps immediately necessary to ensure high-risk individuals are protected from the virus.”
The preliminary injunction was filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles as part of an existing class-action lawsuit, Fraihat vs. ICE, which alleges that lax oversight has caused severe deficiencies in medical and mental health care in ICE facilities, as well as discrimination against detainees with disabilities. As the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in California tops 23,000, immigrant rights advocates here have called on ICE to release detainees with underlying medical conditions.
“This is an unprecedented time in our nation’s history, filled with uncertainty, fear and anxiety,” Hatter wrote in an order to release two detainees at the end of March. “But in the time of a crisis, our response to those at particularly high risk must be with compassion and not apathy. The government cannot act with a callous disregard for the safety of our fellow human beings.”
In response to Hatter’s orders, ICE said the court should provide for detainees’ “immediate return to custody when the risk of contracting the coronavirus” subsides.
In his decisions, Hatter has referenced a 2018 Department of Homeland Security report on Adelanto that found “significant and various health and safety risks.”
At Adelanto, a holding area can contain 60 to 70 detainees, with a large common area and dormitory-style sleeping rooms that house four or six detainees, with shared sinks, toilets and showers. Lawsuits have noted that guards, detainees and cafeteria workers do not regularly wear gloves or masks and that detainees don’t have access to masks and seldom have access to hand sanitizer.
“The public has a critical interest in preventing the further spread of the coronavirus,” Hatter wrote. “An outbreak at Adelanto would, further, endanger all of us — Adelanto detainees, Adelanto employees, residents of San Bernardino County, residents of the state of California and our nation as a whole.”
ICE says it has taken steps to protect detainees from coronavirus infection, including medical screening of newly detained immigrants, monitoring staff, ending social visitation, increasing sanitation of common areas and offering detainees greater access to personal hygiene products.
In court filings, ICE lawyers argued that conditions like those of one detainee ordered released, Pedro Bravo Castillo, a 58-year-old with kidney stones, arthritis and a hernia, don’t rise to the level of vulnerability necessitating release.
“Many immigration detainees share these generic characteristics, and not just now but as applicable to other health crises,” ICE lawyers wrote. “The disruptive effect of ordering petitioners released on this slim, hypothetical basis would long survive the COVID-19 pandemic, and the precedent would serve to release many aliens eligible for removal back into the general public.”
Concerns about the coronavirus appear to be influencing release decisions even for immigrants who aren’t medically vulnerable. An immigration judge at Adelanto has granted a $7,500 bond for a Cameroonian asylum seeker in light of the pandemic.
The man’s lawyer, Robyn Barnard of Human Rights First, said the same judge had denied him bond a month ago. Barnard said her client fled Cameroon after being assaulted in a hate crime that led to his boyfriend’s death, after which police issued a warrant for her client’s arrest in accordance with the country’s anti-gay laws.
“Having anyone in these prisons that is eligible for release otherwise is really stupid at this point,” she said. “ICE should be doing everything they can to alleviate the burden on our hospitals.”