ICE releases California woman amid coronavirus pandemic. Will other detainees be freed?
Immigration authorities this week released from custody a 64-year-old Kern County woman considered a high-risk for severe illness from the coronavirus, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
Sofia Bahena Ortuño, who suffers from diabetes, hypothyroidism and occasional high blood pressure, was released from custody Tuesday, the same day the ACLU sued ICE on behalf of Ortuño and a dozen other undocumented immigrants who also have health issues that could be complicated by COVID-19 infection.
//The ACLU on Friday sent a letter to David Jennings, acting field officer for ICE in San Francisco, urging the agency to release another 24 detainees being held in Kern County. According to the letter, the undocumented immigrants are “at elevated risk of serious illness or death” if they were to become infected. One of the two dozen individuals includes a 74-year-old man “who this week was diagnosed with lung cancer.”
The 24 individuals are not plaintiff’s in Tuesday’s lawsuit.
Jonathan Moor, a spokesman with ICE, said the agency doesn’t comment on pending litigation and referred questions about the agency’s pandemic response to its COVID-19 website.
ICE officials wouldn’t say whether Bahena Ortuño’s release was tied to the ACLU lawsuit. Regarding Friday’s latter, Moor said the agency hadn’t received it. “There’s nothing for us to say,” he said.
Bahena Ortuño’s release comes on the heels of a 31-year-old immigrant testing positive for the coronavirus in an ICE detention facility in New Jersey. Prisons and jails across the nation, including in California, have released some inmates to lower the risk of infections.
In Fresno County, defense attorneys are trying to get their elderly clients released from county jail during the pandemic.
In the lawsuit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court, ACLU attorneys criticized ICE officials, saying their “head-in-the-sand response to the threats of this pandemic will prove deadly to immigrant detainees.”
ACLU attorney Jordan Wells said they want ICE to release the remaining dozen plaintiffs named in Tuesday’s lawsuit from facilities in Mesa Verde in Bakersfield and the Yuba County Jail in Marysville. Neither facility has reported any cases of inmates testing positive for COVID-19.
“ICE is ignoring the alarm bells from public health experts,” Wells said in an interview with The Bee.
Should ICE release other detainees?
Bahena Ortuño, who came to the country illegally, had been in custody since October in Mesa Verde. Her attorney, Judah Lakin, said they believe Bahena Ortuño’s arrest was illegal and plans to fight the case in court.
“I think we are relieved and are happy that she is out,” Lakin told The Bee. “But we are still very concerned about the rest of the plaintiffs in our case, as well as everybody else who is detained.”
Wells said the lawsuit notes Homeland Security medical experts also have urged ICE to consider “releasing all detainees who do not pose an immediate risk to public safety.”
According to Wells, none of the lawsuit’s plaintiffs are facing criminal charges. Some have been detained because they are in the country illegally or are awaiting asylum cases to play out in immigration court.
All of the plaintiffs are older or suffer from underlying health conditions that “make them particularly vulnerable” to severe outcomes from COVID-19 infections, according to the lawsuit.
Wells said officials “cannot wait for someone to show symptoms to respond.”
The lawsuit says the plaintiffs cannot practice social distancing while mixing with the general population inside the detention facilities, which they said includes “communal dining, bathing, and recreation areas.”
Leslie Carbah, a spokesperson for the Yuba County Sheriff’s Office, confirmed no inmates in Marysville have tested positive for the coronavirus. She said medical privacy laws prohibited her from saying whether any had shown symptoms of infection.
She said they are monitoring inmates and screening all in-coming inmates. The jail cut its population by 10% since the public emergency was declared.
ICE’s website on Thursday reported just one confirmed case of COVID-19 infection among detainees - the case out of New Jersey. One ICE employee working in detention facilities also tested positive. A total of 19 ICE employees, working outside detention facilities, also have tested positive for the coronavirus.
Two dozen more detainees are ‘at elevated risk’
In the letter the ALCU sent to Jennings and Mesa Verde Warden Nathan Alllen, attorneys say the additional 24 detainees are at a higher risk due to their age or underlying medical conditions.
“The risk of contracting COVID-19 in congregate settings is very high,” the letter reads. “Despite an overwhelming consensus of public health experts – including two doctors contracted by the Department of Homeland Security – calling for a systematic reduction in the number of people detained, starting with those who are most vulnerable to COVID-19, you have failed to release people like , a 74- year-old man with chronic respiratory problems who this week was diagnosed with lung cancer.”
This story was originally published March 26, 2020 at 7:12 PM.
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