Panic has gripped an immigrant detention center in New Jersey where a staffer tested positive for COVID-19 last week, according to several detainees who complained in telephone interviews that officials have shared little information, at times failed to give them soap and are not doing enough to protect them from contagion.
The positive coronavirus test from a medical staffer at the Elizabeth Detention Center was the first known case nationwide at an immigrant detention facility, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) confirmed last Thursday.
Three detainees told The Marshall Project that officials have done little to improve sanitary conditions inside. They have gone as many as three days without hand soap, the detainees said, and no one has received gloves or masks to protect themselves. They described a facility in which immigrants, dozens of them sleeping in each common dorm, are alarmed as the pandemic spreads outside.
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“Everybody’s scared. It’s not just us. Everybody’s scared,” said one of the immigrants at Elizabeth, a man who asked to be identified only by his first name, Ian. He and the other two detainees said that they and others went on a hunger strike Friday.
ICE officials have not reported a positive COVID-19 test among detainees at Elizabeth or any other detention facility in the country. A spokesperson for the agency said Monday that immigrants at Elizabeth “have soap,” but declined to answer other questions about the assertions made by the detainees and attorneys representing the men. The agency last week suspended social visits to centers nationwide and said it has a pandemic workforce protection plan and that it has supplied facilities with respirators and protective gear.
Still, many immigrants detained around the country share concerns about the virus. Ten detainees have been quarantined at Aurora Contract Detention Facility near Denver, Colorado, igniting fears among others held there. In Massachusetts, more than 50 detainees at a county jail signed a letter protesting conditions they said put them at risk. At the Essex detention center in New Jersey, some detainees last week went on a hunger strike over their concerns.
Source: “Everybody’s Scared”: Panic At Immigrant Detention Center After Positive Coronavirus Test
