Kurdish refugee contracts COVID-19 in US detention centre: lawyer

WASHINGTON DC – A Kurdish asylum seeker contracted COVID-19 in an immigration detention centre in the United States and his roommate, also a Kurd, is at risk of infection because authorities are not taking the proper precautions to protect those under their care, according to the lawyer for the two men. 

The asylum seeker, a 25 year old man from Turkey, arrived in the United States on February 5, crossing the border from Mexico. He was apprehended about 50 miles from the border and brought to Otay Mesa detention centre in San Diego while his refugee claim is processed. His case is based on persecution because of his Kurdish ethnicity and his political activity with the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) in Turkey.

As the highly contagious coronavirus spread across the globe, his lawyer, Samira Ghaderi, requested her client’s release on parole. “I was petitioning with ICE, the Immigration Custom Enforcement, to parole him, to basically let him be out of the detention centers where it's a hotspot for coronavirus. But it wasn't very helpful. ICE did not really respond to my request,” she told Rudaw’s Roj Eli Zalla. 

Her client became ill while in detention and tested positive for COVID-19 on April 10. Ghaderi secured his release through an immigration court in San Diego last week. The judge, however, set bail at $15,000, an amount that the Kurdish man is unable to pay. He, therefore, remains in detention, but not in quarantine. 

“When I spoke with him, he said that it's just once a day a nurse comes in for like 10 minutes, checks his vitals, and then leaves. But what was worrying him is that he does share a dorm room with another client of mine” who is also a Kurd from Turkey, Ghaderi explained. 

She asked ICE to put her client into quarantine to prevent further spread of the virus, “but unfortunately they didn't do anything about it, they honestly didn't even care. It was really, really sad."

There are 57 coronavirus cases among immigration detainees in Otay Mesa, according to local media. 

Asylum seekers in the detention centres are not adequately informed of the seriousness of the pandemic, according to Ghaderi. 

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit in federal court appealing for the release of four detainees, including two at Otay Mesa, who are susceptible to COVID-19 infection because of underlying health conditions. The “plaintiffs are at increased danger of contracting and dying from COVID-19 in these ICE detention centers, where as many as 60-100 people share living quarters,” ACLU stated in a press release on April 3.

A judge in Los Angeles on Thursday ordered ICE to reduce the number of detainees at another California center to “a level that would allow the remaining detainees to maintain a social distance of 6 feet from each other at all times.” 

 

ICE says that detainees with COVID-19 symptoms are housed separately from other detainees, according to medical guidance.