The Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing facility in Adelanto is in the grips of a COVID-19 outbreak, according to federal officials. The confirmed case count more than doubled within a few days.
From the start of the pandemic until Sunday, 14 people had tested positive for the coronavirus — all of them new detainees who tested positive upon arrival at the facility — Department of Justice lawyer Hans Chen said in an email to lawyers with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.
Adelanto staff have routinely tested newly arriving detainees but not those already held at the facility unless they presented severe symptoms, including fever, advocates say.
But on Tuesday, new cases had emerged in two units at the facility, each housing about 40 detainees. Staff then decided to test all detainees in those units, Chen said.
By Wednesday, 38 more people had tested positive, he said. Those two units have been placed in quarantine, while 42 other people in the facility await test results. Staff are conducting contact tracing for all infected detainees, he said.
Reports began circulating among detainees and advocates late last week that multiple units in the facility were under quarantine, with many detainees experiencing COVID-19 symptoms and some staff members hospitalized. ACLU lawyers, who are leading a class-action lawsuit over conditions inside the facility during the pandemic, had asked lawyers for ICE to respond.
ACLU lawyers requested an emergency court order Wednesday asking ICE to immediately conduct rapid tests for all detainees and provide information about testing, medical isolation and hospitalizations in response to the outbreak.
Margaret Hellerstein, a lawyer with the Esperanza Immigrant Rights Project, said some of her clients told medical staff at Adelanto that they had symptoms including cough, chills, sore throat, chest pain and weakness.
“My clients were told that their illness was the result of poor air quality and that they should gargle with salt. They were finally tested on Tuesday after suffering for days,” she said.
More than 5,800 people in ICE custody have tested positive for the coronavirus nationwide, according to the agency.
Last month, ACLU lawyers discovered that 1,900 COVID-19 test kits had been shipped overnight to the Adelanto facility in May, but officials refused to allow the vast majority of them to be used, according to an email exchange released under the class-action lawsuit.
Facility staff planned to begin offering testing to all staff and detainees the day the test kits arrived.
But Gabriel Valdez, the ICE officer in charge of Adelanto said in an email May 23, “Until I receive guidance from my chain of command I don’t want any detainees tested through this voluntary process.”
Instead, ICE decided to test new arrivals but not people already held at the facility.
A similar situation played out last month at the Mesa Verde facility in Bakersfield, when lawyers obtained emails showing that officials had rejected a suggestion to test all detainees there because it would be difficult to quarantine those who tested positive.
After half of the detainees at Mesa Verde tested positive, a federal judge in San Francisco ordered ICE to immediately test all detainees and staff, saying, “there’s no question that this outbreak could have been avoided.”
