Immigrants Detained by ICE Say They Were Thrown in Solitary for Requesting Covid-19 Tests – During an outbreak at Etowah County Detention Center, immigrants say solitary confinement was also used as medical isolation, against ICE guidelines.

Etowah con­tracts with the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to hold peo­ple detained by Immi­gra­tion and Cus­toms Enforce­ment (ICE). To pre­vent becom­ing a Covid-19 hotspot, Etowah claims (in court doc­u­ments) it fol­lows guide­lines from the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion — includ­ing quar­an­ti­ning new arrivals, imple­ment­ing social dis­tanc­ing mea­sures and pro­vid­ing clean­ing sup­plies. But Gold­ing and more than a dozen oth­er peo­ple detained by ICE say the mea­sures tak­en were more than just inad­e­quate — they led to a mas­sive Covid-19 outbreak. 

Sev­en of them say peo­ple were giv­en a sin­gle dis­pos­able mask to last for three weeks. One shares a pho­to of what he says were the only ​“clean­ing sup­plies” he received — a tooth­brush, tooth­paste, comb and com­bo shampoo/​body wash — which came inside a gift bag embla­zoned with the words ​“Mer­ry Christ­mas” from the Sal­va­tion Army.

Immi­grants detained inside Etowah also say many new arrivals were housed in quar­an­tine for only five days or eight days — rather than the rec­om­mend­ed two weeks — poten­tial­ly allow­ing the virus to spread inside the jail. Accord­ing to a par­tial Etowah ros­ter obtained by The Inter­cept and In These Times, ICE trans­ferred at least 24 peo­ple into the facil­i­ty in June. By the sec­ond half of July, the agency report­ed that 21 peo­ple — near­ly a quar­ter of those housed in Etowah’s ICE unit — were sick.

When Gold­ing final­ly emerged from his cell, the orga­niz­er part of his brain clicked back on. ​“I’m look­ing at peo­ple that’s lit­er­al­ly look­ing pale in the face,” he says. ​“And med­ical is doing noth­ing for them.” So, Gold­ing told every­one in the unit to request a test for Covid-19. 

“So you have Africans, you have Jamaicans, you have El Sal­vado­rans — you have dif­fer­ent groups,” Gold­ing explains. ​“What I did was say, ​‘Hey, lis­ten, you talk to your peo­ples, you tell them this.’ ”

Many peo­ple were appre­hen­sive about ask­ing for a test, as guards had already placed the few who were pre­sumed pos­i­tive into soli­tary con­fine­ment, a fate con­sid­ered by the Unit­ed Nations to be tor­ture. In soli­tary, detainees say they were locked in cells with­out air con­di­tion­ing for around 23 hours a day. The aver­age high tem­per­a­ture in July in Gads­den is 91 degrees. 

Nev­er­the­less, by July 4, every­one in the unit — more than 80 peo­ple — had put in requests for a Covid-19 test, accord­ing to inter­views with Gold­ing and anoth­er immi­grant detained by ICE, as well as the affi­davits of nine detainees includ­ed in a peti­tion for a writ of habeas cor­pus Gold­ing filed on his own behalf in the North­ern Dis­trict of Alaba­ma in September. 

Two days lat­er, accord­ing to those 11, Etowah Coun­ty Sheriff’s Office Capt. Mike O’Bryant called a lock­down of the unit. O’Bryant then read the names of the 10 most vocal detainees call­ing for mass test­ing, includ­ing Gold­ing. These 10, O’Bryant said, were going to soli­tary. At the time of their trans­fer, none had test­ed pos­i­tive for Covid-19. All 11 sources say they felt this was pun­ish­ment and retal­i­a­tion for request­ing the coro­n­avirus tests.

“I noticed that all of us who were ran­dom­ly picked were the ones who were vocal, out­spo­ken and shown desire to be test­ed,” Stan­ley Walden wrote in an affi­davit dat­ed August 7. 

“He hand­picked cells and made an exam­ple, in front of every­one, that he real­ly meant to throw any­one who get test­ed into a dun­geon,” Sebas­t­ian Aba­lo Cun­na wrote in an affi­davit dat­ed July 28. ​“It feels like pun­ish­ment for stand­ing up for our right to health and safety.”

After lock­ing down the unit, O’Bryant and oth­er staff mem­bers went from cell to cell ask­ing whether any­one still want­ed a Covid-19 test, accord­ing to Gold­ing and the affi­davits of nine oth­ers. Most declined and signed waivers say­ing as much.

In a record­ed con­ver­sa­tion involv­ing two Etowah employ­ees obtained by The Inter­cept and In These Times, one employ­ee described the events of July 6 as an attempt to ​“bul­ly” peo­ple into not get­ting test­ed. After­ward, both employ­ees said in the record­ing, immi­grants inside Etowah appeared too scared to seek even basic med­ical care. 

Four of those who went to soli­tary say they were unable to com­mu­ni­cate with fam­i­ly for days. Some of their con­cerned fam­i­ly mem­bers called the facil­i­ty. The rel­a­tives of one detainee say jail staff assured them that their fam­i­ly mem­ber was fine. At the time, he was in soli­tary con­fine­ment hav­ing devel­oped symp­toms of Covid-19. Golding’s moth­er says she was told there was no evi­dence of the virus at the facil­i­ty, even as Covid-19 at Etowah was list­ed on the ICE web­site. Accord­ing to the fam­i­ly mem­bers inter­viewed for this sto­ry, nei­ther ICE nor Etowah ever reached out to tell them their loved ones were sick.

The Etowah Coun­ty Sheriff’s Office did not respond to detailed ques­tions from The Inter­cept and In These Times about the jail’s Covid-19 pre­cau­tions, the detainees’ alle­ga­tions of retal­i­a­tion and whether detainees had autho­rized the release of their med­ical infor­ma­tion to fam­i­ly members.

“The health, safe­ty, and wel­fare of those in our care remain a top pri­or­i­ty and con­cern for the agency,” a spokesper­son for ICE wrote in an emailed state­ment. ​“Since the out­break of Covid-19, ICE has tak­en exten­sive steps to safe­guard all detainees, staff and con­trac­tors, includ­ing: reduc­ing the num­ber of detainees in cus­tody by plac­ing indi­vid­u­als on alter­na­tives to deten­tion pro­grams, sus­pend­ing social vis­i­ta­tion, incor­po­rat­ing social dis­tanc­ing prac­tices with stag­gered meals and recre­ation times, and through the use of cohort­ing and med­ical isolation.”

Edwards received the results from his coro­n­avirus test July 8, after he had been in soli­tary for more than a week; he was infect­ed. One day lat­er, Gold­ing received the same bad news.

In iso­la­tion, the men say, their phone access was lim­it­ed. They could make calls only dur­ing a brief dai­ly free peri­od (no more than 75 min­utes), which occurred on an irreg­u­lar sched­ule. Some­times, they say, it popped up in the mid­dle of the night. 

Before he got sick, Edwards would speak with his moth­er and broth­er — Nick­oy Edwards, a police offi­cer in Flint, Mich. — a few times each week. Nick­oy, after not hear­ing from his broth­er the first week of July, decid­ed to call Etowah. After final­ly get­ting some­one to talk to him, Nick­oy says, ​“that per­son answered and told me that they looked in the com­put­er and they told me, ​‘She­moi is OK. He’s on the floor. And noth­ing is wrong with him.’” 

Nick­oy believed the facil­i­ty — at first. Then, weeks lat­er, his broth­er final­ly called, telling Nick­oy he was in soli­tary con­fine­ment and had the coronavirus. 

Nick­oy called Etowah again. ​“And they told me the same thing: ​‘He’s OK.’ 

“I felt like they weren’t telling the truth,” Nick­oy says. ​“I was a lit­tle upset, you know, and con­cerned because, you know, I want him to be OK.”

Their moth­er, Tyson Mills, also began to wor­ry. When she was final­ly able to get through to Etowah, Mills explained who she was and asked about her son. ​“Ma’am, he’s OK,” Mills says she was told. ​“He’s alright. Noth­ing to wor­ry about.” She says it was sug­gest­ed her son didn’t have enough mon­ey on his com­mis­sary account to call. ​“It wasn’t nice,” Mills says. ​“I was like break­ing down in tears.”

Golding’s moth­er, Mervine Duhaney-Met­z­gar, says she called Etowah six times after not hear­ing from her son. At first, her calls were trans­ferred around. ​“And it hap­pened that I called again, and they told me that every­thing is OK, and there’s no evi­dence of any ill­ness being there. And I know that wasn’t true,” she says. ​“It was very dis­turb­ing as a mother.”

​“Even if some­one is being impris­oned, they have the right to prop­er health, to prop­er med­ical atten­tion,” Golding’s moth­er, Duhaney-Met­z­gar, says. Even before Gold­ing got sick, she had put in a com­plaint to the office of her con­gressper­son, Rep. Gre­go­ry Meeks (D‑N.Y.), ask­ing for an inves­ti­ga­tion into how her son had been treat­ed in ICE cus­tody and request­ing that he be trans­ferred to a facil­i­ty clos­er to home. 

“My office has repeat­ed­ly reached out to fol­low up on the case for Mrs. Metzgar’s son Karim, and it has been months since their last reply,” Meeks says of ICE. ​“ICE’s response time is sim­ply unac­cept­able, espe­cial­ly now dur­ing a pan­dem­ic when it’s a mat­ter of health and safety.” 

“I am so hurt deep down with what’s going on,” Duhaney-Met­z­gar says. ​“Behind it, I strong­ly know that it’s an act of racism.” 

Phillips agrees. “[The Trump] admin­is­tra­tion, in my view, does not give a shit about detainees, immi­gra­tion detainees,” he says. ​“So how does it fit into the kind of larg­er dis­cus­sion about racial jus­tice and Black Lives Mat­ter? I think it’s an inte­gral aspect of that. I mean, immi­gra­tion deten­tion is, in many ways, sim­ply an exten­sion of the kind of mass incar­cer­a­tion cri­sis that Amer­i­ca has gone through.”

The crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem and the immi­gra­tion sys­tem are deeply entan­gled, with harsh con­se­quences for Black immi­grants in par­tic­u­lar. One out of every five peo­ple fac­ing depor­ta­tion because of a crim­i­nal con­vic­tion is Black. As of July 2020, about half of the peo­ple detained by ICE at Etowah were Black, includ­ing Gold­ing, Edwards and many of the oth­er men inter­viewed for this sto­ry. Sev­er­al are law­ful per­ma­nent res­i­dents, but have lost their green cards and became ​“deportable” after crim­i­nal convictions. 

Rather than accept depor­ta­tion, many immi­grants remain at Etowah for years as they fight their cas­es, often because they have noth­ing to go back to. Gold­ing and Edwards were both born in Jamaica and came to the Unit­ed States as chil­dren. Edwards, now 30, arrived at 15 on a green card; most of his fam­i­ly now also lives in the Unit­ed States. Gold­ing, now 36, arrived at 9 to reunite with his moth­er, who had fled an abu­sive rela­tion­ship; he has nev­er since been back to Jamaica. 

Before being incar­cer­at­ed by ICE, Gold­ing served a 10-year sen­tence in fed­er­al prison. He and his fam­i­ly say they didn’t know there would be immi­gra­tion con­se­quences for his crim­i­nal con­vic­tion and that he has served his time. 

“I just want my son to get to come home,” Golding’s moth­er says. ​“Every one of us has the right to be forgiven.”

When Edwards final­ly made it to the bus sta­tion, he asked about the next trip to New York. Two days, the per­son at the counter said. And Flint? A week. His best bet would be to keep walk­ing up to Wal­mart, where he could buy a phone or a charger. 

At Wal­mart, Edwards start­ed mak­ing calls: to Phillips, to his broth­er and to Shut Down Etowah, an orga­ni­za­tion that helps immi­grants after release from ICE cus­tody. ​“I basi­cal­ly explained my sit­u­a­tion, and they said, ​‘We’re gonna have some­body come and pick you up. Just stay at the Walmart.’ ”

Shut Down Etowah booked Edwards on a flight to Detroit (out of Birm­ing­ham, Ala.) that same evening, and a vol­un­teer accom­pa­nied Edwards to the air­port. The air­port was eeri­ly emp­ty, and Edwards was ner­vous, he says. He didn’t have any iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and wor­ried he would be sent back to jail. 

“My main mind­set was that I do not want to go through this in a dif­fer­ent jail,” Edwards says. ​“Even if it’s for two, three hours, or even a day. I do not want to do that.” 

The rep­re­sen­ta­tive from Shut Down Etowah did most of the talk­ing, pulling dif­fer­ent legal doc­u­ments out of Edwards’s bag to explain who he was. Some­how, he got on the plane. 

“I guess the [air­port secu­ri­ty] guy must have felt sor­ry for me,” Edwards says.

Arriv­ing in Michi­gan felt sur­re­al to Edwards. Every­one he knew had grown up in the years he’d been away. ​“They lit­er­al­ly was babies when I left,” Edwards says. 

Edwards’s mom calls every day to hear his voice, but he hasn’t been able to see her. She lives in Mass­a­chu­setts; Edwards still hasn’t been able to get a driver’s license.

Edwards now works long hours at a fac­to­ry and has decid­ed to stay in Flint. He’s start­ed work­ing with Shut Down Etowah and speaks with col­lege stu­dents and oth­er groups about his expe­ri­ence in immi­gra­tion deten­tion and the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. After almost a decade behind bars, he doesn’t believe any­one should be incar­cer­at­ed, espe­cial­ly not for immi­gra­tion violations. 

“You say­ing we incar­cer­ate some­body for reha­bil­i­ta­tion? I don’t see it. They don’t reha­bil­i­tate you. They just put you in there till your time up and be like, ​‘Go.’ That’s it,” Edwards says. ​“I don’t feel like we have the right to do that.” 

Edwards, Gold­ing, and the oth­er men inter­viewed for this sto­ry who con­tract­ed the virus while at Etowah say they’re expe­ri­enc­ing pos­si­ble long-term symp­toms of Covid-19: trou­ble breath­ing, exhaus­tion, gas­troin­testi­nal prob­lems, and more. While Edwards is at home with fam­i­ly, Gold­ing remains alone and in cus­tody. ​“ICE deten­tion has been far more degrad­ing than any prison con­fine­ment I have expe­ri­enced,” Gold­ing said. ​“As far as rights go, you basi­cal­ly have no rights.” 

This arti­cle was sup­port­ed by a grant from the Leonard C. Good­man Insti­tute for Inves­tiga­tive Report­ing and was report­ed in part­ner­ship with The Inter­cept, which pro­vid­ed fact-check­­ing by Meer­abelle Jesuthasan.