With 10 deaths and more than 500 positive COVID-19 cases in the nation’s federal prisons, wardens must “move with dispatch” to “move vulnerable inmates out of these institutions.” These are the words that Attorney General William Barr used on April 3rd when he directed the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to reduce the federal prison population in the wake of COVID-19.
This instruction – though still lacking in concrete guidelines and timelines for release – is nearly a 180-degree turn for the Department of Justice (DOJ), which was taking a less urgent approach a just few weeks ago, even suggesting that “many inmates will be safer in BOP facilities.” Now realizing this is not the case, BOP wardens have been given the directive to protect lives against COVID-19. Having failed to prevent the suffering on their own to date, they must reverse course as well.
Since BOP reported its first case of COVID-19 on March 21, the virus has spread through its facilities “like wildfire.” In a matter of days, the COVID-19 infection rate increased nine-fold according to BOP’s own accounting, which is likely an undercount. Over the course of two weeks, those who tested positive for COVID-19 increased 8,600 percent according to the Federal Defenders. Today, more than 350 incarcerated persons and almost 200 staff have COVID-19. And with 70 percent of the BOP population Black and Latinx, people of color will bear the brunt of prison outbreaks.
Public health experts warned that jails and prisons could become “incubators” for COVID-19. It is impossible to heed the primary recommendations of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) when incarcerated or working in a prison. You cannot practice social distancing behind bars. Hand sanitizer is contraband at most facilities. Soap costs money and can otherwise be hard to come by. And 45 percent of the federal prison population has chronic conditions. Experts say that prison systems are like “outpatient clinics,” and “should not weather the coronavirus on their own.” The clear solution is to reduce the size of the incarcerated population.
With the issuance of the April 3rd memo, DOJ and BOP suggested that they were taking those steps, as advocates, federal defenders, elected officials, and public health experts had called for. The recently enacted Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act gives DOJ and BOP somewhat broader authority to reduce the federal prison population in the wake of COVID-19. It is this authority that Attorney General Barr invoked on April 3 when he said “time is of the essence” to move “all at-risk inmates” to home confinement.
However, BOP wardens are not moving fast enough to safely reduce the federal prison population. Their proposed “plan” to review prisoners for release at the federal facility at Oakdale, Louisiana — where six men have already died and we had to sue to get the plan in the first place — is woefully insufficient and lacks any enforceable timelines. This shows that certain wardens — and perhaps BOP as a whole still — do not grasp the severity of the moment.
Before utilizing the CARES Act provisions, BOP moved 566 people from prison to home confinement in response to the pandemic. Now, over 900 people are on home confinement. But thousands should be going home with DOJ’s charge to immediately transfer “the most vulnerable inmates” at “the most affected facilities.” DOJ must now be clear that all facilities require population reduction to mitigate or prevent a COVID-19 outbreak, and that all incarcerated persons susceptible to COVID-19 — those who are older and elderly, as well as those who have underlying conditions — be sent home or to another facility where they can socially distance. BOP should not limit release based on facility or racially-biasedrisk assessments.
A third of BOP facilities are currently reporting COVID-19 cases. One third. Prisons in Oakdale, Louisiana; Danbury, Connecticut; Butner, North Carolina; Lompoc, California; and Yazoo City, Mississippi each report several dozen cases. These numbers are unacceptable, and preventable.
ACLU advocacy has already led to thousands of people being released from local jails and state prisons. The ACLU will continue pushing (and suing) from every angle to stem the outbreak in our nation’s jails and prisons. The wardens overseeing the 122 federal prisons have no time to spare. It is critical that they use every tool at their disposal to get people home.
By Dominique Morgan, Executive Director of Black and Pink, Inc.
On Monday, I ended a 12-hour day returning emails to incarcerated queer folks, providing direct aid for housing to folks living with HIV & AIDS who have been incarcerated and challenging the state of Nebraska to provide humane conditions for incarcerated individuals and decided to mindlessly scroll on Twitter.
I found the quote from the show Ellen DeGeneres filmed from her multimillion-dollar, multi-room mansion: “One thing that I’ve learned from being in quarantine is that people — this is like being in jail, is what it is,” she said. “It’s mostly because I’ve been wearing the same clothes for 10 days and everyone in here is gay.”
What Ellen is experiencing, as well as what many people around the country are experiencing, is nothing like jail. You have choice. You can actually social distance. I assume you were not only allowed to shower that day, you could shower for more than 10 minutes and likely as many times as you like.
This is not at all what incarcerated people who have been locked down as a protective measure in institutions all across America are experiencing. The protective measures inside jails and prisons that many incarcerated individuals are now experiencing bear a striking resemblance to solitary confinement.
When you are in solitary, your partner is not there with you. You are not calling or FaceTiming your mother as many times as you like.
At Black & Pink, which seeks to liberate LGBTQIA2S+ people and people living with HIV who are affected by the criminal justice system, we are currently fighting for access to mail and phone calls for people all across the county. The cost of contacting a loved one is extremely expensive. A video call using the JPay system currently costs $1.25 for a 30 second video.
Incarcerated people are filing lawsuits for access to toilet paper and soap. Those of us who have been incarcerated have always viewed these items as high-demand. For us, this is not new.
I assume if you wanted you could be tested for COVID-19 immediately. On the inside, we are fighting privatized health systems where a Tylenol is $5.00 and testing incarcerated people for COVID-19 is a dream that will not only be deferred, but most likely denied.
Being queer in prison isn’t sitting on your outdoor furniture in your finest silk. For myself and the people we serve at Black and Pink it’s about keeping ourselves safe. The peace I witnessed on your face is an experience that queer people inside rarely have access to — especially in the midst of a pandemic.
The queer and transgender youth that come on your show and dance and sing? Youth just like them are inside of youth detention centers all over this country, wondering when they will be able to go home.
On any average day, prisons and jails in this country are the epicenter of the deterioration of humanity. In a time of crisis or pandemic it’s ten times worse.
I have a firm belief that empathy should be the tool we reach for first – especially at times like these. If you want to know what it’s like to be inside of jail and prisons, Ellen — give me a call. Not on Zoom though. I’m Zoomed out.
Dominique Morgan (They/Them) is executive director of Black and Pink, Inc.
Mario Rodas, Sr. first found out there was a deadly virus spreading through the country while he was watching television at the Plymouth County Correctional Facility in Massachusetts. In early March, Rodas had been pulled over and arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents while driving to the supermarket with his wife, a legal resident and the mother of his three U.S. citizen children. Since then, he’d been in the custody of ICE, mostly at Plymouth.
The more Rodas heard about the disease, the more fearful the 59-year-old became.
“I was scared for my health,” he told the ACLU. “I was worried because I have diabetes, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure. It was stressful, you know?”
Just days later, word spread through the prison — a staff member had tested positive for Covid-19. When they heard the news, Rodas’s son — also named Mario — and the rest of his family were terrified.
“Just do whatever you can to stay alive and hopeful,” he said he told his father over the phone. “We are doing everything we can to get you out of there.”
Mario Rodas, Sr. in family photos with his wife and children.
Across the country, there are nearly 36,000 people in the custody of ICE on an average day. Some are in county jails and state prisons, others are in facilities run by private contractors like the GEO Group. Many are asylum seekers who have asked the U.S. to protect them from persecution abroad. Others — like Rodas — are undocumented workers who lived in the U.S. for years before being swept up by ICE.
Now, public health officials say that overcrowding and poor access to sanitation inside ICE detention facilities is a crisis in the making, with two doctors contracted by the Department of Homeland Security calling them a “tinderbox” for infections in a letter to Congress on March 19.
“As local hospital systems become overwhelmed by the patient flow from detention center outbreaks, precious health resources will be less available for people in the community,” they wrote.
Across the country, tensions are rising inside of ICE facilities, with detained immigrants and their families fearing that cramped conditions and an indifferent bureaucracy are a deadly threat to their safety — and to the wider public’s health. So far, at least 20detainees and dozensofstaffatfacilities housing them are confirmed to have contracted COVID-19. Many others are under quarantine, raising fears that the virus is spreading undetected and potentially infecting guards who shuttle in and out for their shifts before returning home.
These numbers are likely a significant underestimate due to shortages of COVID-19 tests. In a hearing last week on an ACLU lawsuit, an attorney working for the government admitted that there were no tests available at two Maryland facilities, while simultaneously arguing that detainees there were not at risk due to the lack of confirmed cases. ICE has said they aren’t required to disclose information about staff at privately-run detention facilities who have tested positive.
“The nature of these facilities is such that it’s really impossible to engage in the social distancing that we’re all practicing right now,” former director of ICE John Sandweg told Democracy Now.
After the staffer at Plymouth fell ill, Rodas said that guards started bringing him and the others in his cell block to meals in shifts. But each group was still as large as 80 people at a time, and none were given masks or gloves to wear.
“The government is asking everyone to stay home and not have physical contact with other individuals. But meanwhile, my dad was out there amongst 80 to 150 other individuals, and you don’t know if they could potentially have something and be contagious,” said Rodas’s son.
Realizing the danger he was in, Rodas’s lawyer, Kerry Doyle, reached out to friends at the ACLU of Massachusetts. On March 25, the ACLU filed a petition asking a judge to order ICE to release Rodas along with another detained immigrant on the grounds that their medical conditions placed them at high risk for COVID-19 complications, in violation of their constitutional rights.
“They released him on pretty strict conditions,” said Doyle. “He has a GPS bracelet.”
Rodas’s son rushed to Plymouth to pick him up. “I was so happy, I couldn’t believe it,” he told the ACLU. Now, Rodas is quarantining in a room in the house until 14 days have passed since his release.
“I think that the whole thing highlights how easy it is for immigration [authorities] to release detainees that have cases that are low priority and allow them to go back home during these very uncertain times,” said his son.
Mario Rodas, Sr. being released from Plymouth County Correctional Facility on March 27th.Mario Rodas, Jr.
The suit that led to his father’s release was one of a series that have been filed across the country in recent weeks seeking similar orders. Fifteen were filed by the ACLU and its affiliates, with over thirty people released from detention as a result of those suits so far.
Alfredo Garza was one of those lucky few. He was released on March 26 from the Tacoma Northwest Detention Center, a private facility run by the GEO Group in Washington, following a suit filed by the ACLU and the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project. Garza suffered a heart attack while detained this past January and says he was chained to a bed in the hospital while receiving treatment.
“Doctor care is terrible there,” he said. “The worst there is.”
In 2018, an investigation by Seattle Weekly revealed that the Tacoma facility had been providing substandard medical care to immigrants housed there.
Washington was the first state in the country to experience a substantial outbreak of COVID-19, and in early March Garza says that he and others in the facility became afraid when another detainee fell ill with what they assumed was COVID-19.
“They took him out in a suit, like one of the people who catch bees,” he said.
Geo Group and ICE have not confirmed any cases of COVID-19 in Tacoma Northwest Detention Center, but Garza says that his unit was placed under quarantine and kept away from contact with others anyway:
“We said, ‘Hey we need sanitizer or chlorine.’ But they said, ‘No, we don’t have any.’”
After the ACLU’s suit was filed, Garza was released along with another detainee who suffers from high blood pressure. Since then, 80 people housed in the facility have gone on hunger strike to raise attention to the danger they say they face from the pandemic.
“I have a friend who has diabetes and he was worried when he found out that there were people with coronavirus inside,” Garza said. “They didn’t even tell him, ‘Hey, we are going to put you somewhere else’ or ‘We’re going to do something.’ They don’t care if you die.”
Despite widespread calls from public health experts that the detained population must be drastically reduced in order to prevent COVID-19 from spreading unchecked and taxing the healthcare system, so far ICE has largely refused pressure to release people in its custody.
On Tuesday, the agency indicated it had identified 600 detainees deemed “vulnerable” to COVID-19, and released 160 of them. But that same day, lawyers for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) asked a judge to stay a ruling that would have released 22 detainees with medical conditions from two county jails in Pennsylvania.
“Families were getting ready to pick up their loved ones when the stay came down,” said Michael Tan, Deputy Director of the Immigrants’ Rights Project at the ACLU. “ICE is playing an unacceptable game of Russian Roulette with people’s lives.”
Karlyn Kurichety is a supervising attorney with Al Otro Lado, a California-based organization that provides legal services to asylum seekers and other immigrants. She says that her clients in the Adelanto ICE Processing center — another Geo Group-run facility — are scared.
“It’s just cruel and really disturbing, there’s basically no precautions being taken,” she said. “The detainees are not given any information about COVID-19. There are no signs, no talks, no advisories, nothing of that nature.”
Adelanto has put strict measures in place requiring visiting attorneys to wear N95 masks — despite the fact that even health care workers in the state aren’t able to find them. Since then, Kurichety says she hasn’t been able to visit her clients —most of whom are asylum seekers — or arrange a non-recorded phone call to discuss their case.
Recently, she says she spoke with one client who told her that two people in his dorm collapsed with symptoms that sounded like those of COVID-19. The dorm was subsequently placed under quarantine. Another said that he’d been cleaning his cell with body wash.
“It’s like if you wanted to design a situation where a virus would spread, this is what you’d do,” she said.
On March 30, the ACLU filed suit on behalf of six detainees in Adelanto with serious medical conditions, arguing that “without a rigorous testing regime, it is impossible to conclude that COVID-19 has not already entered Adelanto.”
But Kurichety says that those who remain are fraying emotionally.
“They’re really scared. I would say it’s almost like panic,” she said. “Their families, too, because we’ve been talking to their sponsors and sometimes they break down in tears. They’re really frightened for their loved ones.”
