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ICE Quietly Releases Hundreds Of Local Immigrants As COVID-19 Tears Through Jails
By
Matt Katz
Published Apr 14, 2020
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Matt Katz / WNYC / Gothamist
By
Matt Katz
Published Apr 14, 2020
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If Julio Colcas was going to die, he at least wanted to be around his family. The 55-year-old had already spent nearly two years in Immigration and Customs Enforcement lock-up at the Essex County Correctional Facility in Newark. He had a litany of medical and mental ailments, and as he had told Gothamist/WNYC, he feared the coronavirus would come for him.
Then early in the morning of April 3rd, he got word: He was going home. “I was happy as hell when they called me — I couldn’t believe it,” he said. He loaded his belongings into a ripped garbage bag, got outfitted with an electronic monitoring bracelet to ensure he shows up to an ICE check-in in June, and took two trains, a bus, and a taxi home to South Plainfield, NJ.
“When I left everyone was clapping—yay!” he said. “By me leaving, it gives them hope it could happen to them too.”
In fact, it could happen. At the Hudson, Essex and Bergen County jails in New Jersey, where the majority of immigrants picked up by ICE in the New York City region end up, 20 percent of immigrant detainees have been released over the last month due to risk of contracting COVID-19, according to a Gothamist/WNYC review. While the release of criminally-charged inmates in light of the pandemic has been widely reported, the extent of ICE releases was not previously known.
The releases are significant because detention centers in the two states are a hotspot for the virus, accounting for about a third of positive ICE detainee cases in the country. Thirty-five detainees at the three county jails in New Jersey and the private detention center in Elizabeth have, or have had, the disease, according to local officials. That’s more than the number of criminally-charged inmates at those facilities who have tested positive.
ICE contracts almost all of its jailing functions to local officers. And so while ICE agents have largely been absent from the jails in recent weeks, dozens of county correctional officials have fallen sick. At the Hudson County jail a total of four staffers, including two nurses and a corrections officer, have died from COVID-19.
While the releases are notable, they fall far short of what advocates, attorneys and even a former ICE director are demanding: the release of the vast majority, if not all, people in ICE custody. ICE detainees are essentially pre-trial inmates. They are awaiting disposition of their asylum claims or orders of deportation. Some are Green Card holders, like Colcas, who were transferred to ICE custody after finishing prison terms, because legal immigrants convicted of crimes can be deported.
Many of those who were freed from the three jails—245 people so far—were released on orders of supervision, which means ICE used its discretion to let them out of custody but is keeping them monitored, like through an electronic ankle bracelet, so they show up to later court dates and check-ins at ICE offices.
Other immigrants have been let out via court order, as immigration attorneys file a flurry of habeas corpus lawsuits in federal court saying their clients—held on civil immigration violations—are being unconstitutionally punished by remaining incarcerated during a pandemic. In one case that resulted in the release of five ICE detainees, Judge Madeline Cox Arleo in New Jersey ruled that "there can be no greater punishment" than to remain at Hudson and Bergen County jails during this pandemic.
ICE neither confirmed nor denied the number of releases, which Gothamist/WNYC cobbled together from county officials and advocates. The agency only said that cases for those at greater risk of exposure are being reviewed, and that by the end of March, 160 detainees nationwide who were deemed “vulnerable” were released. In a statement, the agency said: “Decisions to release individuals in ICE custody occur every day on a case-by-case basis.”
Coronavirus has ripped through the Hudson County jail. In addition to the four staffers who have died from the disease, the jail has also seen the most releases of those jails that we surveyed: 113 ICE detainees have been let out, according to First Friends of New York and New Jersey, an advocacy group that works with the Hudson jail. Ten detainees there have tested positive, and all have since been released, according to a county spokesman. (ICE reported only five at the facility have tested positive.)
In Essex, 43 correctional staff have tested positive for the disease. Meanwhile 95 ICE detainees and regularly-charged inmates are in quarantine units because of illness or potential exposure, according to county data.
Essex detainee Kawan Augusto de Carvalho, 29, has tested positive, according to his mother, Simone Carvalho de Alencar. He also has anemia. In a desperate call to her last week, de Carvalho said he was vomiting blood.
“I’m scared of dying,” he told her, according to a recording of the call she provided to Gothamist/WNYC. “Tell [my lawyer] that I need to get out, that I’m coughing blood, for the love of God tell her to tell that to the judge.”
ICE said the Brazilian native was locked up for overstaying his visa and a pending criminal charge that the agency did not disclose.
The COVID-19 numbers at the Essex jail could grow in the coming days because officials will now screen everyone. It’s believed to be the first jail in the country to do so. That will help officers slow the spread of the disease by separating those based on their prior exposure and immunity to the virus.
At Bergen County Jail, 52 detainees have been released, leaving 204 inside, and there have been two positive ICE cases, one of whom has since been released, according to a jail spokesman.
Data could not be obtained for the detention centers in Elizabeth, NJ, and Batavia, NY, each of which have had seven cases of COVID-19 among detainees. The Orange County Jail in New York hasn’t recorded coronavirus cases nor releases among its ICE population, according to an undersheriff there.
More than 1,000 immigrants in the three New Jersey jails, the Orange County Jail and the Elizabeth detention center remain locked up as the virus continues to spread. They have held hunger strikes about conditions, including a lack of access to soap and cleaning supplies. One detainee at the Elizabeth detention center said all detainees have to buy soap for the shower. He also alleged that they haven’t changed their prison uniforms for two weeks because the detainees who do the laundry contracted the virus.
Detainees at the facilities are locked in their cells for at least 23 hours a day to minimize their movement around the dorms and contact with other detainees. Lawyers for detainees said if there’s a shortage of staff or too many detainees in a unit, they are sometimes kept in cells for days in a row. The Bergen County jail mandates that detainees and inmates wear masks outside their cells, though that doesn’t happen elsewhere, and detainees fear catching the virus in communal areas.
Through protests and letters, advocates have asked for most if not all detained immigrants to get released, given coronavirus. Two attorneys for several detainees said ICE—which has discretion to release those in its custody—is continuing to deny or ignore requests for release, even if the detainees have an address on the outside to go to and medical conditions like asthma and hypertension.
New Jersey Senator Cory Booker introduced a bill this week to release those who do not pose a public safety or flight risk, beginning with those older than 50 and younger than 21. “This is indeed a matter of life and death,” he said.
Matt Katz reports on air at WNYC about immigration, refugees, hate, and national security. You can follow him on Twitter at @mattkatz00. WNYC’s Melanie Marich contributed to this report.
Tagged
COVID-19
coronavirus
ICE
immigration
Matt Katz
Matt Katz is a former WNYC & Gothamist reporter.
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