U.S. judge orders immediate release of ICE detainees at risk for coronavirus exposure in Pa. county prisons

York County Prison

The York County Prison is where most immigration detainees in Pennsylvania are held after ICE arrests. (Jose F. Moreno/Philadelphia Inquirer)

A U.S. judge Tuesday ordered the immediate release of a dozen federal immigration detainees held in three Pennsylvania prisons, finding they “face a very real risk of serious, lasting illness or death” from the coronavirus.

Middle District Judge John E. Jones III’s decision is in response to a plea by the ACLU to release those detainees from the county lockups in York, Pike and Clinton counties because their ages and/or health problems heighten the chance they will contract a deadly dose of COVID-19.

Jones’ temporary restraining order, which frees the detainees held by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on their own recognizance at least through April 13, overrides arguments by U.S. Attorney David Freed that they actually are safer from the virus behind bars, where they receive regular monitoring and free government-paid medical care.

The judge found the detainees “face the inexorable progression of a global pandemic creeping across our nation – a pandemic to which they are particularly vulnerable…At this point it is not a matter of if COVID-19 will enter Pennsylvania’s prisons, but when it is finally detected therein.”

The detainees can’t maintain social distancing – a main precaution against contracting the virus – while in the prisons, Jones found. At York, the judge noted, detainees are housed in a dormitory-style cell blocks that each contain 60 people who eat and sleep in that same space. At Clinton, the bunks are less than 2 feet apart, he wrote, and the laundry system often breaks down, making it hard for the detainees to keep their clothes and bedding clean. They experience similar crowding in the Pike prison, Jones noted.

Human rights experts and public health officials support the ACLU’s plea to free the at-risk detainees, the judge noted. He cited estimates that the COVID-19 death rate among such vulnerable people is as high at 15 percent.

In any case, Jones found that ICE has means other than detention to monitor those under its charge. The pandemic has “forced us all to find new ways of operating that prevent virus transmission to the greatest extent possible. We expect no less of ICE,” Jones wrote.

The county prisons “are plainly not equipped” to protect the detainees from COVID-19 and continuing to hold them there could lead to an “unconscionable and possibly barbaric result,” he concluded.” If we are to remain the civilized society we hold ourselves out to be, it would be heartless and inhumane not to recognize the (detainees’) plight.”

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