Amid COVID-19 fears, Keys jail ends lucrative contract, gives ICE back its detainees
After nearly 23 years of housing immigration inmates for the federal government, the Monroe County detention center in Key West abruptly severed its contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, officials confirmed.
The move to quietly bus 48 detainees from the Monroe County detention center on Stock Island to the Krome detention center in Miami-Dade County in the middle of the night Friday was made after the sheriff’s office requested that all immigration inmates be picked up and transferred out.
Monroe County Sheriff’s Office officials decided to void the contract to protect its regular inmate population, three federal immigration sources told the Miami Herald.
The Monroe County jail has long rented detention space to ICE to temporarily house as many as 95 ICE-detained individuals in addition to holding approximately 600 local detainees.
The ICE detainees are regularly transferred to and from immigration court in Miami-Dade for their federal hearings. Sources told the Herald that the frequent trips to the crowded facility in Miami had the sheriff’s office uneasy over the possibility that the coronavirus could easily be transmitted.
An ICE spokesman confirmed to the Herald that as of Saturday, the federal agency no longer holds a contract with Monroe County but would not explain when or why that decision was made. The Monroe County Sheriff’s Office refused to comment on “contract issues” Saturday and Sunday, but confirmed that all immigration inmates were bused away. Sheriff Rick Ramsay hung up on a reporter.
The sheriff’s office has held an “Intergovernmental Service Agreement” with ICE since May of 1997, records show. As of 2015, ICE was paying the county $87 a day per detainee, according to the most up-to-date contract available, which ran through April 2015.
According to 2015 data compiled by the Immigrant Legal Resource Center and analyzed by the National Immigrant Justice Center, if operating at its “guaranteed minimum” capacity of 50 daily immigration detainees, the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office could have generated more than $1.5 million annually.
It’s unclear when the most recent contract between ICE and Monroe County was slated to end. Officials would not provide the Miami Herald a copy of the document Sunday.
The facility is at the southernmost tip of Florida. The center is located approximately 160 miles from Miami. Monroe County has acknowledged it is “time consuming and difficult” to get to the county.
For years, Immigration advocates have complained that ICE has had a pattern of jailing immigrants in remote locations, leaving detainees without access to legal counsel.
Rebecca Sharpless, director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Miami School of Law, says the clinic started doing know-your-rights presentations and helping people at Monroe because “no one else was.”
“With the three-and-a-half-hour drive each way, we could only get out there once a semester,” she said. “It is unclear whether the shuttering of Monroe will in the long term increase access to justice for detainees. I am concerned that ICE will respond by shipping even more people out of state, including to the country’s largest immigration detention center in Lumpkin, Georgia, a two-hour drive from Atlanta.”
Bud Conlin, director of Friends of Miami-Dade Detainees, a visitation program for the Krome detention center, told the Herald “any day that a detention center closes is a good day.”
He added: “They saw a real tragedy coming in light of COVID-19. I hope they cut the contract in time to keep the population on Stock Island safe.”
Coronavirus in detention
As of Saturday, the Monroe County detention center had “no known COVID-19 cases in any of our facilities,” said Adam Linhardt, a sheriff’s office spokesman.
The transfer of the Monroe detainees to Krome came one day after their section of the jail was deep-cleaned and a few days after dozens of inmates went on a hunger strike at Monroe as well at Krome.
“They took us out of our living quarters and moved us all to another section of the jail while they deep- cleaned our area,” one inmate told the Herald on Saturday. “They told us that someone was sick and that they had to clean the whole space.”
On Sunday, the day after the 48 Monroe inmates arrived, the entire Krome detention center was placed on a mandatory quarantine, meaning detainees facility-wide were not allowed to leave their rooms for meals or any regular daily activities, according to a detainee there.
“We are being told that someone here has the coronavirus so that’s why we have to stay on lockdown,” the detainee said. “They are not saying who.” A dozen other other detainees and lawyers confirmed the lockdown.
ICE told the Herald Sunday that no detainees or ICE staff have tested positive for the coronavirus in any Florida detention center. The agency would not comment on whether any contract employees have tested positive.
The Krome detention center is operated by Akima Global Services under a contract with ICE. AGS did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Sunday.
In the past month, quarantines in immigration detention centers in Miami-Dade, Broward and Glades Counties have mounted after several detainees developed flu-like symptoms and were sent to the hospital.
The possibilities of getting tested for coronavirus inside the detention centers are slim to none, federal sources say.
“There aren’t enough testing kits, so the only way someone will get tested is if they’re extremely old and basically dying,” one ICE prosecutor said.
The ICE public affairs office told the Herald that the agency has conducted COVID-19 tests but wouldn’t say how many and if there are any results that have not come in.
“That isn’t something we have to provide,” said ICE spokeswoman Tamara Spicer, in an email.
According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention testing guidelines cited by ICE, people who qualify for COVID-19 examinations are those who are already hospitalized, detainees 65 and older and detainees with underlying health conditions who have symptoms.
Spicer would not explain what screenings entail, but workers inside the facility say it is cursory: “They are taking people’s temperatures when they are brought in,” one Krome security guard told the Herald. “That’s it. They aren’t taking into account that just because somebody isn’t showing symptoms doesn’t mean they aren’t carrying the virus.”
According to the federal health agency, people who are asymptomatic can still be considered high risk.
Though federal immigration officials have said non-criminal arrests would be curtailed amid the coronavirus pandemic, new non-criminal migrants are still being picked up and taken to South Florida detention centers without being tested for COVID-19, three federal sources told the Miami Herald.
On March 18, ICE said it would temporarily be using more discretion when it comes to the arrests of non-criminal undocumented immigrants in an attempt to help stem the spread of the coronavirus. In a statement, the agency said it would instead focus on criminal investigations.
But that hasn’t happened, according to detention center staff, who told the Herald that number of new detainees keeps rising and so do the deep-cleanings and quarantine orders.
The influx and constant transfers of inmates has sparked national cries from immigration advocates, demanding that immigration detention centers release inmates amid the health crisis. Over the past few weeks, local and state governments across the United States have reduced their jail and prison populations in an effort to prevent a coronavirus outbreak behind bars.
“Consequently, federal and state prisons have already started to engage in the early release of many individuals. ICE, too, has the authority and discretion to engage in the mass release of immigrants who are being held on merely a civil violation. AI Justice calls on ICE to release immigrants in its custody before lives are needlessly lost,” said Jessica Schneider, director of the detention program at Americans for Immigrant Justice, a South Florida organization also calling on the closure of detention facilities.
In a letter last month to governors nationwide, Amnesty International said “One of the most critical steps you can take to immediately reduce the spread of COVID-19 is to utilize your public health and licensing authority to instruct federal immigration detention facilities, county and local jails to substantially reduce their detainee occupancy capacity.”
ICE did not respond to inquiries from the Miami Herald on whether this measure has been considered. The Herald hasn’t heard back from the Florida governor’s office.
Added Schneider: “The contract termination speaks to the deadly nature of this virus and the precautions that local governments must take to ensure the safety and well being of those in its custody and the community at large. It is further emblematic of the shortcomings of any jail like setting during this pandemic, no one is safe in ICE custody and perhaps Monroe County knew that to be true.”
This story was originally published April 5, 2020 at 7:42 PM with the headline "Amid COVID-19 fears, Keys jail ends lucrative contract, gives ICE back its detainees."
