Covid Concerns Spur Lawsuit Against ICE

Juan Pablo Rojas Ceballos looks out at the single, open room he shares with four dozen fellow inmates in a federal immigration detention center and sees a recipe for disaster.

Bunk beds spaced three feet apart. Seven cafeteria tables overcrowded at every meal. Soap that’s so diluted it slips through one’s hands like water. And a pandemic that wreaks the most havoc in close, unsanitary quarters just waiting to break inside.

A newly filed class action lawsuit by a Yale Law School clinic agrees — and is seeking his and other detainees’ release before Covid catches them first.

Ceballos, a 21-year-old local Colombian immigrant, has spent the past four months locked up in Unit A of the Bristol County House of Corrections (BCHOC) in North Dartmouth, Mass.

On March 27, the Worker & Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic (WIRAC) at Yale Law School joined the Boston-based Lawyers for Civil Rights (LCR) and the Brazilian Worker Center in filing a class action lawsuit against Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson, Bristol County Superintendent Steven Souza, and top federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials.

The complaint alleges that the dozens of detainees like Ceballos who are held in civil immigration detention at Bristol are at undue risk of contracting and suffering from the novel coronavirus. That’s because of the alleged close proximity in which inmates are confined, an inadequate provision of soap, toilet paper, and other basic cleaning supplies, the admission of new detainees who are not properly tested or screened for Covid-19, and the government’s refusal to release detainees with pre-existing medical conditions who are uniquely vulnerable to being harmed by the virus.

“Plaintiffs are subject to imminent infection, illness, and death because of their civil immigration detention – literally trapped, with no safe alternative available to them,” reads the complaint, which can be read in full here.

“Immediate relief is necessary before the coronavirus ignites the tinderbox that is BCHOC and irreversible damage is done.”

ICE New England Region Public Affairs Officer John Mohan declined responding for this article, citing the office’s practice of not commenting on pending litigation.

He directed the Independent to ICE’s coronavirus Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) webpage, which reads in part: ​“The health, welfare and safety of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainees is one of the agency’s highest priorities. Since the onset of reports of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), ICE epidemiologists have been tracking the outbreak, regularly updating infection prevention and control protocols, and issuing guidance to ICE Health Service Corps (IHSC) staff for the screening and management of potential exposure among detainees.

The case is scheduled to be heard Thursday afternoon by federal Judge William G. Young of the District Court of Massachusetts.

“Our team, in cooperation with a strong network of immigration attorneys, community and faith-based organizers, and the courageous organizing of the immigrants detained at Bristol, are working hard in hopes of securing their swift release before the evil of this virus makes inroads into the detention center,” Yale Law School student and WIRAC intern Kayla Crowell told the Independent in an email statement.

Local immigrants rights activists associated with Unidad Latina en Accion (ULA) drove up to Hartford Thursday morning for a honk-a-thon outside of a state ICE facility in support of the release of detainees from Bristol.

“Stop right there Sheriff Hodgson,” ULA’s John Lugo is quoted as saying in a Thursday morning press release. ​“It’s time that you step away from these hate groups and release our neighbors and loved ones. People’s lives are at stake.”

UPDATE: According to this article published by WBUR Thursday evening, the federal government confirmed in court Thursday afternoon that a nurse who works in the Bristol detention facility has tested positive for Covid-19. The article also states that Judge Young declined to certify the nearly 150 ICE detainees at Bristol as a single class, and that he has proposed sub-classes of detainees, including those with pre-existing medical conditions.

The case is next scheduled to be heard in the District Court of Massachusetts on Friday afternoon. Click here for ULA’s response to the day’s proceedings in court.

“Only A Matter Of Time”

Ceballos said he has been held in Bristol’s Unit A for just over four months.

In a Wednesday afternoon phone interview with the Independent, Ceballos and his wife Alejandra, who lives in East Haven and works as a medical assistant, expressed many of the same concerns articulated by the lead plaintiffs in the complaint.

So did a New Haven woman who told the Independent in another Wednesday afternoon phone interview that her husband, a New Haven resident and Mexican immigrant, has been detained at Bristol for the past seven months.

So did a handful of petitions and letters written by Bristol detainees and provided to the Independent by Connecticut Bail Fund organizer Vanesa Suarez, who has been in regular contact with multiple Bristol detainees before and now during the class action lawsuit’s working its way through the courts.

“It’s a very stressful moment right now,” Ceballos said. ​“We’re facing deportation and immigration processes and being separated from our families, which is a daily stress factor for us detainees. And now we’re also facing the coronavirus epidemic.”

He said that all nearly four dozen detainees in Unit A share the same open space, and sleep in bunkbeds spaced no more than three feet apart. He said they eat breakfast, lunch and dinner at the other end of the same building, where there are only seven consistently crowded tables.

“It’s virtually impossible for us to practice social distancing in here,” he said. ​“We’re highly crowded. People are sleeping one on top of the other.”

Furthermore, he said, ​“the soap they give us to wash our hands is all diluted.” He described the sanitation of the facility as ​“poor,” and that the accumulation of dust causes him and fellow detainees to wake up in the night coughing and sneezing.

And he said that new detainees are still being brought into the facility, including five last week who he said were transferred to Bristol from Louisiana, a state that has quickly become one of the country’s epicenters of the coronavirus outbreak.

Ceballos added that detainees have to fill out a medical slip if they need medical attention, and that those slips are only responded to the following day on weekdays, and not until Monday on weekends.

He said that no one in his unit has shown symptoms of the virus yet.

“But it’s just a matter of time,” he said. ​“If one of us gets contaminated with it, it’s only a matter of time before we’re all infected.”

“It’s just really hard to trust somebody to take care of somebody you love, and to know that they’re not doing what they should be doing,” Alejandra said.

She said that she and Ceballos have a two-year-old son. ​“My biggest thing is we want him to see his dad again,” she said.

She said she knows that Ceballos wasn’t born in this country, but that doesn’t mean he should be put in harm’s way during a pandemic.

“It really doesn’t hit you until it’s you and you see how messed up the system is,” she said. ​“They treat them worse than criminals, worse than murderers.”

“No Separation At All”

The New Haven woman who spoke with the Independent Wednesday about her husband’s incarceration at Bristol said she’s similarly concerned about her partner contracting the novel coronavirus while detained.

“They don’t get any masks or gloves or disinfecting products,” she said in Spanish, as translated into English by Suarez. ​“They have to share everything. There is no separation at all, and there is no way for them to do the six-foot distancing that is recommended. The bathroom, the shower, is all shared with everybody inside.”

She said that her husband has gotten sick three times during his time incarcerated at Bristol, frequently coming down with a cough and a runny nose. ​“She feels like he is not going to receive the support or medical care or medication that he needs if he were to be infected with coronavirus,” Suarez translated.

The New Haven woman said that her three children frequently ask her when they will see their father again. She said her oldest has been struggling with school and that his grades have gone down since her husband was detained. ​“He’s had a hard time processing his feelings, pain and anger about what’s happening.”

The Covid-19 pandemic has only made a stressful situation that much worse, she said.

She said she works at an area hotel, and that she has been going into work even as the virus continues to spread. ​“She fears that she’s exposing herself and that she might get sick,” Suarez said. But she’s the sole breadwinner for the household now that her husband is locked up.

Calls For Release

Juan Pablo Rojas Ceballos, Alejandra Rojas, Suarez, and the New Haven woman whose husband is held at Bristol all called on ICE to go beyond providing hand sanitizer and trying to space detainees further apart.

They instead said that the federal government should release detainees held on civil immigration detainers at Bristol.

“I know it’s hard for them to release people,” Ceballos said. ​“But it’s not impossible.”

That call mirrors those made by local and national criminal justice reformers, who have stressed the unique dangers faced by incarcerated people during this pandemic.

That’s also one of the key demands in the Yale Law School clinic class action lawsuit, as well.

“ICE regularly uses alternatives to detention to maintain custody and control over non-citizens in immigration proceedings, such as supervised release, electronic ankle monitors, home confinement, and telephonic monitoring,” the complaint reads.

The plaintiffs argue for the immediate release of detainees and their placement in community-based alternatives such as conditional release. Anything else could prove deadly.

“All of them are at imminent risk,” the complaint says about BCHOC’s immigration detainees. ​“Their confinement conditions are a tinderbox, that once sparked will engulf the facility.”