MIAMI — Immigration detainees at the Krome detention center in Miami-Dade are so terrified of catching the coronavirus from new incoming inmates that fistfights erupted among migrants in detention and staff twice this week, leaving guards and detainees bloodied and inmates with black eyes in solitary confinement.
“There were fist fights. There was blood,” one detainee told the Miami Herald. “It was so vicious that the lieutenant was yelling and crying over the radio.”
The fear that the influx of newcomers would bring COVID-19 with them — while U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement refuses to test detainees for the illness — sparked two violent fights Tuesday night, when current inmates refused to let incoming inmates through the front doors of their crowded dormitories.
The Miami Herald spoke to two high-level security officials, 15 immigration lawyers and 58 detainees at Krome, who confirmed the “chaotic disturbances” in two separate detention units.
“Officers were rushed by dozens of detainees,” one officer said.
A guard who witnessed one of the incidents added that “some detainees were hit and handcuffed and there was blood on the floor.”
Jose Almaraz, 30, says he was one of them.
“Three guards hit me across the face with handcuffs, my left eye is black and swollen and I think my nose is broken,” Almaraz said from his solitary confinement cell. “They kicked me in the eye. The doctors have come to check my temperature but they won’t attend to my injuries. Please help.”
According to the detainees the Herald interviewed, punches started flying in one dormitory after more than 60 people inside demanded that all detainees be tested for the virus.
The other disturbance, in which detainees demanded to be released, was quickly controlled.
“There are sick people everywhere, everyone coughing and sneezing,” one detainee said. “They refuse to give us masks, gloves or hand sanitizers. When you try to cover your face with your shirt you get in trouble. We are petrified to catch this and die and never see our families again.”
Their fears appear to be well-founded.
According to a sworn statement filed in Miami federal court Wednesday by Liana J. Castano — ICE’s acting director in charge of the Krome facility — one detainee on the premises has been confirmed to have COVID-19 and has been placed in medical isolation. At least 238 detainees have been quarantined after they were exposed to the virus.
The inmate who was mentioned in the statement, a 27-year-old Mexican national, arrived at Krome in early March and began showing symptoms last week after sleeping in what he told the Herald was an “overflowing” dormitory with dozens of other people.
He was taken to the hospital on April 3 after showing serious symptoms, discharged back to Krome on Monday and placed in medical isolation.
“I was told I had coronavirus by the doctors on Monday once I got to Krome but wasn’t given access to the tablet and phone so that I can tell my family,” he said, noting that ICE reinstated his access on Thursday morning. “They are not telling anyone anything and don’t want people to know what’s happening inside this building.”
Wednesday’s sworn statement by ICE came a day after the Herald reported the facility’s first confirmed case of coronavirus: a 29-year-old detainee who was transported to a Miami-area hospital. He is currently in critical condition in the intensive-care unit, medical sources confirmed.
Before Castano’s statement, ICE had repeatedly told the Herald that no detainees in its custody in Florida had tested positive for the virus. However, the agency circumvented having to disclose that any inmates were sick at the time because the detainee was technically no longer in ICE custody but rather at a hospital, federal sources said.
The Herald also reported that two employees who work at the Krome detention center tested positive for the coronavirus. The two guards work for Akima Global Services, the government contractor that operates the facility for ICE. Federal sources say an additional 60 officers have been sent home, many of them awaiting virus test results.
Staffing has been so short that guards have had to switch to 12-hour shifts, and some officers awaiting COVID-19 tests results are still going to work, according to a federal source familiar with conditions inside Krome.
“There is little to no transparency; not even employees are being told when someone tests positive,” one senior guard told the Herald. “The only real way to have an accurate number of how many actual positive cases there are is by officers, who test positive letting other officers know. The company and ICE are not sharing the actual numbers.”
For about a month, ICE has published on its website the number of confirmed coronavirus cases for its detainees and federal employees nationwide. As of Thursday afternoon, 48 detainees and 15 ICE detention-center employees nationwide have tested positive for the virus.
However, those numbers do not reflect the number of third-party contractors who work at ICE facilities who have tested positive for COVID-19. ICE’s website also doesn’t mention how many people at its facilities have been tested or are being monitored for the virus because that “isn’t something we have to provide,” the agency has told the Herald.
On Monday, Krome’s on-site case of the inmate with coronavirus mentioned in the federal court document wasn’t listed on the agency’s website. And the case of the other detainee who ended up in a hospital ICU wasn’t included in the ICE sworn statement.
When the Herald asked ICE about the omissions on Thursday, an ICE spokesman said “there is no discrepancy,” and did not explain why the detainee currently at the hospital wasn’t included in statement filed in federal court.
After the Herald’s inquiry, ICE added the second COVID-19 case to its online list.
Catano, the Krome director, provided the federal judge the sworn statement in response to a legal organization’s request that its client, a Jamaican national, be released from detention amid the global pandemic and worsening conditions inside the facility. U.S. District Judge Kathleen M. Williams had ordered immigration officials to explain what the federal agency is doing to protect detainees inside from catching or spreading the virus.
“The inconsistent information provided by ICE about confirmed COVID-19 cases is inaccurate and appears calculated to deceive,” said Gregory Copeland, the Jamaican national’s attorney. Copeland works with the Rapid Defense Network, an immigration legal rights group based in New York.
He added: “Responding to a federal district court order yesterday to provide information about COVID-19 cases, ICE identified one person housed at Krome confirmed to have COVID-19. The day before, however, ICE notified Congress that a detainee from Krome had tested positive for COVID-19 and was at a local hospital. If ICE is willing to provide misleading information to Congress and under penalty of perjury to a federal court, something drastic will need to be done to avert a disaster.”
ICE ultimately released the Jamaican national and the case was dismissed.
Jessica Schneider, director of the detention program at Americans for Immigrant Justice, stressed that “the accuracy of these numbers is paramount.”
“ICE employees, contractors and others who regularly frequent the detention centers are relying on this information to make informed decisions about how to best safeguard their health and the health of their family,” she said. “If ICE is inaccurately reporting their numbers this not only erodes public trust in their agency but could further endanger the health of countless individuals.”
Though federal immigration officials have said ICE would curtail arrests of noncriminals during the coronavirus pandemic, new noncriminal migrants are still being picked up and taken to South Florida detention centers without being tested for COVID-19, two federal ICE prosecutors confirmed to the Herald.
The new arrests of low-level offenders — such as people with suspended drivers licenses or visa overstays — come at a time when three detention centers in Miami-Dade, Broward and Glades counties have had to quarantine large sections of their facilities daily after detainees developed flu-like symptoms, sending some to the hospital.
“Detainees are … being ping-ponged from detention center to detention center,” an ICE prosecutor said. “It’s a tragedy waiting to happen.”
Sources inside the Glades facility told the Herald that at least 20 new detainees were transferred there from Krome on April 1; at least 48 from Monroe County went to Krome on April 3. At the Broward Transitional Center, access to Spanish news TV stations was cut off Thursday night.
“My husband just called me and told me that they took away Univision so that they wouldn’t stay informed about what has been going on in other detention centers across the country,” one inmate’s wife said. “They didn’t want the detainees to watch the news about COVID-19.”
For almost five days, Krome has been on a facility-wide lockdown, in which detainees aren’t allowed to participate in the usual daily activities such as trips to the cafeteria or visits to the library or recreational areas.
“We’ve been getting all of our meals delivered to our rooms, cold,” one Guatemalan national told the Herald. “When families and attorneys told us the news about coronavirus at Krome, ICE cut off all phone lines, access to tablets and TV for us.”
Dozens of detainees at Krome told the Herald they have been on a hunger strike for more than a week. On Monday, a federal judge granted the agency’s request to force-feed a detainee, records show.
Francisco Fuentes, a Honduran national at Krome, told the Herald he has been feeling ill for days and still won’t be administered a coronavirus test.
“I feel aches all over my body, I can barely breathe and have a fever,” he told a reporter between breaths and tears. “My throat hurts so much. My chest hurts. I feel faint and weak and they say they won’t test me.”
The chances of getting detainees being tested for coronavirus inside the Florida detention centers are slim, federal sources say.
“The only way someone will get tested is if they’re over 65 or basically dying,” one ICE prosecutor said.
According to agency leaders, Krome has medical and mental health staffers on site and that all detainees coming into the facility are having their temperature taken by security guards at the door. Detainees are asked if they have traveled to a COVID-19 hot spot in the past 14 days, and if they’ve had any contact with anyone that has tested positive.
If the answer is yes, the detainee is isolated for 14 days together with dozens of others who also answered yes.
The practice, which the government has dubbed “cohorting,” is “not standard and incredibly dangerous,” says Dr. Ashish Jha, director of Harvard’s Global Health Institute
“Chances are that a much larger amount of people in that center, including contractors, will catch the coronavirus,” Jha said. “If you cohort people together, you are basically assigning people to get infected.”
According to Jha, the average person infects about three other people.
“The basic principle of public health is that you want to separate people who are infected from people who are not infected,” Jha said. “And the only way you know that is by testing them.”
The Krome detention center can hold about 1,000 detainees at a time. The facility opened in 1980 to house an influx of Cuban and Haitian refugees. The population has fluctuated over the years based on conditions in Central and South America. Since 2006, the population has fluctuated between 550 and 875 people, according to a 2019 report published by the Southern Poverty Law Center and Americans for Immigrant Justice.
John Sandweg, former acting director of ICE and former acting general counsel for the Department of Homeland Security, told the Herald that “to the extent that ICE is not testing symptomatic detainees, it is an abdication of their duty to protect the health and safety of their employees and those that are in their custody and care.
“ICE must do everything it can to test detainees to protect the workforce and provide them with an opportunity to take necessary precautions when dealing with infected detainees,” he said. “ICE also has a responsibility to the detainees themselves to take every precaution to protect them from this virus. It is impossible to fulfill these obligations without testing symptomatic detainees.”
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