Alton Edmondson is no longer in the custody of the U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service. America, however, the employee of the Jamaican structure got rid of the feeling of being locked up alone.
While COVID-19 sickened dozens of other people in a for-profit immigrant detention center in Bakersfield this summer, members placed Edmondson in solitary confinement for weeks, and added hitting him on a mobile phone used for disciplinary segregation that inmates call “the hole,” according to court records. . .
ICE officials said Edmondson, who has been continually negative for coronavirus, was quarantined and removed from other inmates for his own protection.
But for Edmondson, the three-week isolation he said he lived is tantamount to punishing solitary confinement. Officials at the ICE Resource Center in Mesa Verde locked him up for about 23 hours a day, he said.
“I got depressed. I felt powerless,” said Edmondson, who has lived in the country for nearly 20 years and has three children born in the United States. “They served me food through a hole in the door. They made me feel like a terrorist or a murderer. “
Edmondson’s joy is reflected in other ICE detainees, whose reports to lawyers and court records recommend widespread use of solitary confinement as COVID-19 has proliferated in migrant detention centres across the country.
“Based on the evidence we’ve gathered, it’s the practice they allow their subcontractors to use,” said Elizabeth Jordan, a lawyer at the Center for Civil Rights Implementation and Education in Denver, who represents plaintiffs at Fraihat v. ICE, an action of elegance challenging ICE for detention, adding the use of punitive segregation.
“It’s harmful because it puts a lot of pressure on other people’s intellectual fitness,” added Jordan, who said other people held in solitary confinement included immigrants with COVID-19. “This is not what public aptitude officials have in mind when they recommend separating other people.
The coronavirus has inflamed more than 6,300 immigrants detained through ICE, adding charges in California, according to the agency.
The firm calls for immigrants held in solitary confinement for medical reasons not to be treated as if they were in solitary confinement, even if they were placed in the same cells as those used for disciplinary reasons.
But inmates report being locked up alone for more than 20 hours a day as a way to quarantine the pandemic, advocates say, and some immigrants refuse to reveal their COVID-19 symptoms for fear of being thrown into the “hole. “
On August 4, it was shown that at least six men from Mesa Verde’s bedroom B wore coronavirus and cleaned the bedroom to space only the positive cases. Edmondson expected the guards to move him to one of the facility’s other 3 bedrooms with other inmates who instead took him to an entrance cell.
The windowless room, used by staff to interview new inmates, is very small, with bathrooms but no beds, he said.
“It’s horrible. I didn’t need to be there,” Edmondson said. ” There’s no new air. I’ve never been in a position like this for so long in my life. “
The guards brought a television and DVD player for Edmondson to watch movies, but forced him to sleep on a mat on the floor and did not have access to the commissioner, on whom he depended to comply with his Rastafari herbal regimen.
People should not be detained in such a waiting room for more than 12 hours, according to ICE standards, but Edmondson said officials left him there for seven days.
The guards then confined him to a limited housing unit (known as RHU) for two more weeks, ICE reports to a San Francisco district court.
Edmondson said he only had his Bible to read. Sometimes he would stop through a small window on the steel door of his cell phone to watch TV in the outside hallway, he said.
Immigration officials didn’t understand why he might just not live in a bedroom with other people who also tested negative, according to Edmondson and his lawyer.
The GEO Group, owner and operator of Mesa Verde, has addressed questions to ICE, but an ICE spokesperson refused to comment on Edmondson’s case.
Since June, ICE services have been ousting inmates with coronavirus symptoms and 14 days of quarantine for newcomers, according to the agency’s COVID-19 guidelines.
But the prisoners are housed in dormitories; Most detention centers have only a few sets where others can be remote for disciplinary or other reasons, such as medical isolation, according to lawyers and investigators who have visited ICE facilities in California and other states.
Mesa Verde, where Edmondson was arrested, has at least one medical isolation room and at least one admissions cell, and 3 URGs that have been completed since August, when ICE began reporting on the COVID-19 outbreak on district court premises. The facility has a maximum capacity of 400 internal.
ICE asks that, during the pandemic, others quarantined in cells used for solitary confinement will have to obtain regular visits from the workers’ medical corps and have access to intellectual conditioning facilities and other benefits.
“Making efforts to provide similar access to radio, television, reading materials, non-public assets and the economy that would be in people’s housing complexes,” reads in the agency’s pandemic reaction requirements.
But the defenders say that didn’t happen. As a component of the Fraihat case, Jordan filed in federal court in Los Angeles the affidavits of two men held in isolation by the pandemic.
On May 28, Oscar Pérez Aguirre returned to the Aurora Contract Detention Center in Colorado from a local hospital where he was treated by COVID-19. He said he had been held for two weeks on a filthy, icy isolation cell phone.
Pérez Aguirre said he was so ill that he couldn’t get up, but that a doctor or intellectual fitness staff didn’t notice it when he was ingested. A nurse would arrive every day to take her temperature and blood pressure, she said.
“While I was in disciplinary isolation Array . . . I felt depressed and had nothing to do,” said Pérez Aguirre, 57. “I asked for cards (to pass the time) and they told me I couldn’t have them. “
Ruben Mencias Soto had a party in May after being treated for chest pain in a hospital and sent back to California’s largest immigrant detention center in the city of Adelanto at the Inland Empire. An outbreak of COVID-19 in the personal facility has already occurred. inflames more than 120 inmates and is on the rise.
“I’m locked in a cell phone about 23 hours a day,” said Mencias Soto, 37. “I’m very worried about having more disorders at the center and I’ll die without them nodding.
Aurora and Adelanto detention centers are also managed through GEO Group, the Florida-based prison company.
An ICE spokesman refused to comment on court statements through Mencias Soto or Pérez Aguirre about their quarantine, raising the lawsuit.
“WE. Immigration and Customs Enforcement can’t comment anymore because of an ongoing litigation,” ICE spokesman Jonathan Moor said in a statement. “However, the absence of a comment should not be construed as an agreement or stipulation in any of the disputes. “
The Immigrant Freedom defense organization reports that dozens of other people detained at various ICE services called the organization’s hotline, saying they were afraid to reveal coVID-19 symptoms for fear of being isolated. held for 14 days in solitary confinement without medical attention, according to the organization.
“COVID-19 has exacerbated long-standing disorders in the U. S. immigrant detention system, which has had an effect on the intellectual fitness of detainees,” Rebekah Entralgo, the organization’s spokesman, said in a statement.
“Resources such as phone calls, outdoor and recreational meals at the right time, which are difficult to locate even in general cases, are severely constrained by the pandemic, which adds to the isolation of migrant detention,” Entralgo added.
The United Nations has argued that prolonged solitary confinement is prohibited for more than 15 days.
The practice will never be used in minors or others with intellectual disabilities because it can constitute “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment,” wrote Juan Mendez, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, in 2011.
The stress and suffering of solitary confinement can lead to the onset or worsening of an intellectual disease, according to researchers.
The tension of solitary confinement has been particularly damaging to Chuong Woong Ahn, an inmate who committed suicide at the Mesa Verde detention center in May, according to his assistant angels Trevor Kosmo of the Raza Angels Legal Center in Oaklos angelesnd.
Ahn, a 74-year-old boy from South Korea, committed suicide in the shower of a medical isolation unit while quarantined after returning from a hospital. ICE knew Ahn had a history of suicide attempts, Kosmo said, but was unable to monitor him continuously, as required through at-risk inmates.
“I think my client, Mr. Ahn, died as a result of ICE’s negligence,” Kosmo said. “And because he was quarantined in solitary confinement without giving him the person he should have under his own detention criteria.
Kosmo, who also represents Alton Edmondson, said ICE did not want to lock up other people waiting for immigration court hearings and that the pandemic has highlighted long-standing detention disorders.
“It’s absolutely inhumane to put others in a windowless room for 23 hours to quarantine them,” he said. “If you can’t quarantine them correctly, they have to lose everyone. “
Both Ahn’s family circle and Edmondson can simply sue the GEO organization under a new California law signed last month through Gov. Gavin Newsom. AB 3228 allows Americans to sue in state court opposed to personally tenure corporations for violating the terms of their contracts. .
AB 3228 supporters argue that the new law paves the way for state-level liability for violations of ICE criteria in for-profit facilities.
Concerns about the use of solitary confinement through ICE predemia.
A recent Congressional investigation revealed that ICE hires establishments that are “ill-equipped” to comply with the agency’s detention guidelines, and that ICE and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, rarely apply corrections to known issues.
The report of the House National Security Committee also found that inmates are denied good enough medical and intellectual care and that ICE establishments “misuse segregation in retaliation,” infrequently as opposed to inmates who have engaged in hunger movements to protest against detention situations.
“Unfortunately, ICE prioritizes the protection of prisoners in its custody, than the welfare of inmates in its custody,” concluded committee staff members who visited 8 detention centers, adding two in California, and interviewed more than 400 immigrants detained there.
An ICE spokeswoman defended the firm and said it would review the committee’s report. He added that ICE’s “aggressive inspection program” includes site-specific visits and compliance reviews through independent third parties, and that the firm has made progress in detention situations on recommendations of the DHS Office of Inspector General.
ICE “is fully committed to the health and protection of those in our charge,” said Stacey Daniels, who runs the agency’s public affairs. “However, it is transparent that this one-sided review of our amenities was done to tarnish our agency’s reputation, rather than reading about the care detainees receive while in detention. “
ICE refers to the practice of isolating an inmate from the general population under so-called “segregation” and authorizes it for disciplinary or other reasons, adding for the coverage of a vulnerable inmate itself. Institutional directors are required to notify ICE cash managers when inmates are placed in segregation for 14 days or more, in accordance with firm standards.
Between 2013 and 2017, ICE’s services in the country recorded more than 5,300 cases of isolation that lasted more than two weeks, according to Caitlin Patler, assistant professor of sociology at UC Davis, who analyzed incident reports. A user was away for more than two years, he said. Said.
“It’s a punitive Array experience, no matter why someone is put into solitary confinement,” Patler said.
Patler was concerned about locating that other people with intellectual diseases were overrepresented in ice isolation cases and immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean, predominantly black, experienced a quarter of all incidents, while representing only 4% of the detained population.
“There may be some really problematic racialized practices occurring in detention centers where a scenario involving a black detainee affects segregation much more than one would expect based on his prisoner component. population arrested,” said Patler, co-author of a study to be published soon on the factor in the peer-reviewed journal Punishment and Society.
An ICE spokesman declined to comment on Patler’s findings, saying they had still been published.
ICE recently imprisoned some 20,000 people across the country, some 38,000 immigrants who were detained by the end of March. Almost some of the detainees have been convicted, while the rest have notable criminal fees or have only violated immigration laws.
Alton Edmondson had been imprisoned for 14 months in Nevada County, California, when he pleaded guilty to a serious conviction for gun attack and robbery.
Throughout his criminal process, Edmondson, who is black, insisted that he had been wrongly accused of the crime and says his arrest is the result of racist trafficking prevention in a county where around 1% of the population is black. .
The criminal court had granted him bail, however, he and his circle of relatives might not pay it, he said, and remained behind bars.
“It’s all racial discrimination,” said Edmondson, who visited a friend in California when he was arrested. “I’m innocent. “
When Edmondson was arrested in November 2018, sheriff’s agents did not locate a firearm in the vehicle he was in and the fees were filed on the basis of a questionable identity through a witness, according to court documents filed through the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office. office, along with ACLU and other nonprofit legal aid organizations, sued ICE to free vulnerable Mesa Verde prisoners for the pandemic.
Edmondson learned that if he lost his case, he could face up to 12 years in prison, but if he accepted the plea agreement, he would be released in four months, according to court records.
“Because of the county’s racial demographics and widespread racial prejudice among jurors, his lawyer said his chances of winning at the trial were slim,” according to Edmond’s request to be released from ICE detention filed through Genna Beier, an assistant public defender in San Francisco.
On May 26, while Edmondson was leaving the Nevada County jail, ICE officials arrested him and arrested him in Mesa Verde.
Edmondson said he sensed at the time that pleading guilty to the crime would result in deportation proceedings and the loss of his green card, allowing him to paint and live legally in the United States for about 20 years, but ICE denies it. .
“He signed an agreement noting that he understood the nature of the crimes and accusations and the consequences of his statement,” signed officials said they opposed his release, adding that Edmondson had already committed two crimes similar to marijuana possession and a DUI.
But on September 23, the U. S. district judge won a U. S. district judge. But it’s not the first time Vince Chhabria ordered ICE to release Edmondson, who suffers from asthma, along with 140 other inmates at Mesa Verde, where COVID-19 inflames about 60 inmates.
Chhabria’s release orders assess the threat of fitness of the user in custody in relation to the likelihood that they will endanger the network or not appear in immigration court proceedings if they are released.
Edmondson is quarantined at a Bakersfield hotel until October 7, following the judge’s orders. He then plans to return home to Georgia, where two of his three children live. The youngest is 6 years old, he says.
“I feel good, I feel freedom, ” he said. I want to see my kids get lost a lot.
Edmondson said he hopes that talking about his joy in isolation at Mesa Verde will make ICE’s detention more humane for others.
“That’s not the way I was treated,” he says. “I think it’s very important for other people to hear my story. “