Two immigrants in the Aurora detention center have contracted COVID-19, marking the first outbreak among people being held there after employees reported getting sick.
The two are among 1,181 confirmed cases inside immigration detention centers across the country. This comes after two ICE employees at the Aurora detention center, operated by private prison company GEO Group, were confirmed to have the virus.
Colorado immigration advocates identified one of the Aurora detainees with COVID-19 as Oscar Perez Aguirre, a 58-year-old man with hypertension and an enlarged heart. Perez Aguierre was in the Sterling prison expecting to be released to his sister, but ICE detained him and booked him into the Aurora detention center, according to a news release from the American Friends Service Committee. He had tested negative for COVID-19 in Sterling.
Advocates are calling for an investigation and are asking for Perez Aguierre’s release to family in Mexico when safe. They say that ICE did not inform his lawyer that he was moved to a hospital for 36 hours and refused him access to his attorney before he was hospitalized.
ICE officials say the agency places detainees with COVID-19 symptoms in their own medical housing room or in a medical airborne infection isolation room and transports those who need it to hospitals.
