Ted S. Warren/AP Photo
A detainee is seen through a window as she talks with a health care provider in a medical wing at the ICE detention center in Tacoma, Washington, December 16, 2019.
CLEVELAND – Before COVID-19, the Morrow County, Ohio, jail didn’t have soap readily available to the inmates and ICE detainees held there. There wasn’t hand sanitizer, Lysol spray, or other sanitary products. For hot water, inmates had to use the bathroom sink, where they also cleaned their own dishes. The mop used in the bathroom is used throughout the facility. Drinking water comes from the same water fountain for the roughly 75 inmates and ICE detainees held in the jail. (The facility has a total of 126 beds.)
A close family member of an ICE detainee who is held in the jail told the Prospect about these conditions. Her detained relative told her that little has changed since the novel coronavirus outbreak. The jail has installed a “little soap dispenser but watered the soap down to the point it’s likely ineffective,” she said. The facility has stopped visits since the outbreak, but when visits were allowed, this family member said she saw a rattrap in the public restroom, and that the booths where inmates spoke with visitors were rarely if ever cleaned. Even now, the facility is set up so that inmates sit in large groups during mealtimes and everyone sleeps in the same room, rather than in cells.
The family member asked the Prospect for anonymity because she fears retribution against her detained relative. She didn’t want her detained family member to speak with the Prospect because she says the facility records calls. Since the end of in-person visits, the jail allows family members one free video call per week. Additional calls go for the rate of $15 for a 25-minute call.
As of publication, ICE is still transferring detainees to facilities around the country, and even continues to deport people. The agency’s protocols, American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Eunice Cho told the Prospect Wednesday, are actually making the risk of spread worse. “The only thing that ICE should be doing at this point is releasing people and making sure that people who are at the highest risk of death are not exposed to COVID-19 and that for people left in detention there are actually fewer people so that they can actually practice social distancing,” Cho said.
The ACLU is suing in federal courts across the country on behalf of ICE detainees who are medically at risk from severe illness should they contract COVID-19. Similarly, the Southern Poverty Law Center is seeking an emergency injunction to force ICE to take immediate action to protect people in its custody.
As of April 2, no ICE detainees have tested positive for COVID-19, according to the agency, but the agency did not say how many—or if any—have been tested.
Earlier this week, 16 people were taken from the Morrow County jail for ICE deportations, according to the family member of the detained individual at the facility. In addition, two people were transferred into the Morrow County jail from other facilities. One is an ICE detainee who is currently being held in a separate housing unit, according to Morrow County Sheriff John Hinton. He explained in an email that “this is because he came to us from Franklin County after one of their deputies tested positive for COVID-19.” The second transfer is an inmate at the jail. Both are having their temperature taken regularly, and Hinton said neither shows “signs or symptoms” of the novel coronavirus.
“Since the introduction of COVID-19, we have kept a dorm open for any new intakes so they can be monitored to make sure they show no signs or symptoms,” Hinton added in an email.
Other detainees in Ohio have been quarantined. Two detainees recently transferred to a jail in Monroe County were placed in a separate dorm, because both were transferred from Franklin County, where a deputy tested positive. On April 1, the Toledo Blade reported that an inmate and an employee tested positive in Lucas County jail.
“[The Morrow County facility is] very low on gloves and toilet paper and they ran out of covers for their thermometers and they’re just trying to clean the thermometer with alcohol,” the close family member of a detainee said. In response, she explained, people have refused to have their temperature taken, and nurses have instead attempted to measure temperature by pressing the thermometer into inmates’ fingers. “I think the workers are starting to get scared and they’re not able to hide [that] they’re overwhelm[ed] or anxious about the situation because all the inmates are seeing that. What are they gonna do when they run out of gloves?” she added.
Inmates and ICE detainees are more likely to have medical conditions that put them at higher risk from COVID-19 and may need more intensive care than the general population, putting added stress on the local health care infrastructure.
Morrow County, a rural county in central Ohio, does not have the hospital or medical capacity of more urban areas, and the rapid spread of COVID-19 in a jail could overwhelm local health care capacity. As Cho explained, because inmates and ICE detainees are also more likely to have medical conditions that put them at risk of severe illness from COVID-19, they may need more intensive care than the general population, putting added stress on the local health care infrastructure.
“We know that the counties are holding immigrants for ICE because it’s a moneymaker for them,” said Lynn Tramonte, director of Ohio Immigrant Alliance. “Now is not the time to be profiting off of people’s incarceration.” Four county jails in Ohio have contracts with ICE to house detainees, for a total of 260 people in the agency’s custody as of Wednesday.
The family member said that her detained relative previously had cancer and is not receiving the medical care he needs. “I’m scared to death that if he gets this he could die,” she said. Her family member, she said, doesn’t have any felonies, convictions, or other deportable crimes. She said that other ICE detainees in the facility are in similar situations—some inside the facility have congestive heart failure, asthma, or other conditions.
“You know, if something happens to him, I don’t know what I’m going to do,” she said. She worries that it’s only a matter of time.
