Berks County Residential Center. (Laura Benshoff/WHYY)
Employee at Berks County immigration detention center tests positive for COVID-19
The facility is one of three in the nation where ICE holds children with their families while their cases proceed in civil court.
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Alanna Elder/WITF -
Laura Benshoff/WHYY
Berks County Residential Center. (Laura Benshoff/WHYY)
(Leesport) – An employee at Berks County Residential Center received a positive test result for COVID-19 on Oct. 16, a week after last working in the building, according to a letter sent to families detained there.
Advocates with the Shut Down Berks Coalition say families received the letter on Oct. 21. The letter also said the employee was a member of the medical staff and that the center was responding by cleaning the building and contact tracing.
Court documents refer to the employee as an “advanced practice provider,” a title which can describe a registered nurse or a physician’s assistant. They show he completed his last shift on Oct. 9, began a quarantine on Oct. 11, and was tested on the 12th. He resigned on the 16th, the same day the results came back positive, according to the court filings.
The facility is one of three in the nation where Immigration and Customs Enforcement holds children with their families while their cases proceed in civil court. Jacquelyn Kline, a lawyer with the nonprofit Aldea, which represents detained families, said her clients are frustrated and scared.
“This has been their fear all along, that COVID was going to come to the facility,” she said. “And that being in a detained setting, they have no control over anything, really. They can’t self-isolate. They can’t protect themselves in the ways that we, someone who’s not detained, can take precautions.”
The situation is even more challenging for parents who have toddlers, she said, because it is more difficult to ensure they wore a mask and harder to keep them in one room. Five of the seven children Aldea represents are three years old or younger.
Kline called for testing of everyone detained or working in the facility, something that Bridget Cambria, another attorney representing the families, said the center has not done since June. According to the coronavirus page on ICE’s website, the agency tests and quarantines new arrivals to a detention facility and “complies with CDC guidance.” Under CDC guidelines for testing, contact tracing and subsequent testing applies to people who came in close contact with someone who tested positive starting two days before the infected person noticed symptoms.
Kline said people also receive tests when they are facing deportation or when they leave the facility for other medical treatment, but no one has been tested as a result of the confirmed case.
Since before the pandemic, advocates and people formerly detained at Berks complained of sickness and poor medical attention. In statements used as exhibits in a lawsuit that went before the Pa. Supreme Court, detained parents said their children were ill. Kline said clients are frequently sick when they arrive at the center and during detention.
She said the news that the confirmed case came from the medical department is especially concerning.
“I think it’s highly unlikely that residents did not come into contact with this person if they work in medical,” she said. “Our clients are constantly in medical. Even if you just need an aspirin, that is something that needs to be given to you by medical.”
This is the Berks County facility’s first confirmed case, though the two other family detention centers, which are located in Karnes County and Dilley, Texas, have already had cases.
In recent weeks, COVID-19 cases have been spiking in Pennsylvania, with Berks County in the top 10 counties where cases are rising the fastest.
“Nothing has changed,” Kline said of the pandemic and the risks it presents to people in detention. “In fact, the numbers are getting higher. As we see in Karnes and Dilley, even without them testing everyone or testing multiple times, they’re having a lot of employees, and, according to them, new intakes, testing positive.
ICE said in a statement that it could not comment on the health of a former contract employee and deferred to a company called STG International, which provides health care services for prisons and other facilities. STG International has not responded to a request for comment.
The Shut Down Berks Coalition repeated calls for all the families to be released and for the prison to be closed, writing in a press release that those actions are “the only way to ensure the safety of families.”
Three people submitted public comments to the Berks County Commissioners’ meeting on Oct. 29, asking them to end the contract under which ICE runs the facility on county property. The comments included a statement purported to come from a person detained in the center that read, “we ask the people and leaders of the United States to please not let us die in the center. Please give us a chance to be released with our children. The trauma and pain are unbearable.”
Commissioner Christian Leinbach responded to the comments by saying the person who tested positive was not a county employee but someone working for an outside company. “All of the CDC and Department of Health guidelines are being followed with that facility to protect both residents and staff,” he added.
Leinbach has said he supports keeping the contract with ICE in Berks County, while Commissioner Kevin Barnhardt said in 2019 he supports ending the contract. The third commissioner, Michael Rivera, has not publicly denounced the center, but members of the Shut Down Berks Coalition say he has expressed opposition to it in private meetings. During the summer, activists with the Berks County chapter of the Sunrise Movement protested at the homes of Barnhardt, Rivera, and Gov. Tom Wolf, demanding they use their respective powers to close the facility.
On Oct. 30, Sunrise Berks returned to Rivera’s house, where protesters staged a vigil at the end of his driveway. For about half an hour, they sang protest songs and took turns giving speeches, livestreaming the demonstration on Facebook. Much like the previous protest, Rivera came out to speak with police and told demonstrators to speak with him in his office.
Troy Turner, a spokesperson with Sunrise Berks, said advocates with the Shut Down Berks Coalition have been using public forums to pressure Rivera since he was running for office.
“We asked him questions at his town halls, we called his office, we scheduled meetings, we’ve gone to the public meetings,” he said.
Throughout this year, activists around the country have been taking inspiration from a Civil War-era abolitionist group known as the “Wide-Awakes”. For the Sunrise Movement, that means meeting politicians at their homes.
“We share these values that every family should have the right to enjoy a peaceful dinner together or take care of their family when we get sick. We just have to act on those values,” Turner said.
In March, advocates representing families in all three detention centers filed a lawsuit against the federal government, calling for their immediate release due to the heightened risk of contracting COVID-19 in confined group settings. In July, Judge James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia declined to order the release of all families, describing ICE’s steps to prevent coronavirus cases as a “moderate, though undeniably fragile, success.” He did, however, leave the door open for people to file their own requests for release due to concerns with the pandemic.
Lawyers have also used a 1997 agreement on family detention to advocate for families’ release during the pandemic. Judge Dolly Gee of the Central District of California ruled in June that ICE should release families, writing that family detention centers are “on fire” due to the threat of COVID-19. The order has not been enforced.
ICE files updates with Gee on any positive test results among detained families or staff in the three facilities. The latest update provided the details on the recent Berks case, as well as the positive test results of people connected to the two family detention centers in Texas.
Since the employee in Berks County tested positive, ICE has moved two families from the center, deporting one to Guatemala and the other to Haiti after a transfer to Dilley, according to Kline. The families’ lawyers did not know whether family members had been tested before leaving Berks County, but those returning to Guatemala had, Kline said. The Central American country has required the U.S. to test all deportees since April, when at least 44 people on one plane tested positive and the country suspended deportation flights. Depending on its agreement with a home country, ICE said in a statement, the agency tests people or checks for symptoms, such as fever, before deporting them.
Note: This article was updated to clarify the position of advocates with the Shut Down Berks Coalition.
Note: This article was updated on Nov. 2 to include details from documents filed with the Central District Court of California, the recent protest by Sunrise Berks, and the deportation of two families formerly in the center.
WITF’s Alanna Elder is part of the “Report for America” program — a national service effort that places journalists in newsrooms across the country to report on under-covered topics and communities
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