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Law360 (April 3, 2020, 7:41 PM EDT) -- A federal judge agreed Friday to release a handful of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees, citing the urgent need to reduce the Massachusetts jail population amid the COVID-19 pandemic and vowing to review 10 cases per day as part of a lawsuit brought by civil rights groups.
U.S. District Judge William G. Young told lawyers on a conference call hearing Friday afternoon that he was ordering the immediate release of three detainees with conditions of self-quarantine and house arrest, following ICE's release earlier in the day of six detainees. All of those removed from the Bristol County House of Correction had no prior or pending criminal charges.
Judge Young said the aggressive bail review schedule will begin on Tuesday. He asked Lawyers for Civil Rights, which filed the proposed class action, to work together with the government to see whether they could come up with 50 people whose bids for release could be reviewed.
"I am struck by the exigency of time and the spread of this disease," Judge Young said. "This is rough. Ten a day, no oral hearings, this is not what we would usually do."
Judge Young said he would review the cases as quickly as possible but stressed the need to make decisions on an individual rather than classwide basis.
Lawyers for Civil Rights filed suit March 27, and the ACLU followed with an emergency petition April 1 seeking to remove detainees from Bristol. The groups argue that the facility lacks the ability to allow inmates to practice social distancing and other sanitary measures needed to stem the spread of the coronavirus.
On Thursday, it was revealed that a nurse working in the facility had tested positive for the virus. The government said the nurse had little contact with detainees and that those who did come into contact with the nurse were quarantined and are showing no signs of sickness.
Citing case law, Judge Young said Friday that the current health crisis gives him the power to review the petitions for release.
"I base that finding on the extensive spread of the COVID-19 virus throughout Massachusetts," he said. "I recognize that there has been no positive tests of detainees. Nevertheless, as I have said earlier and I do now find, the risk of an outbreak of COVID-19 among these detainees in conditions where what we are taught is appropriate spacing cannot be maintained, is such to satisfy [the legal standard.]"
In a hearing Thursday, Judge Young broke up the 148 proposed class members into five groups, ranging from those without any criminal record at all to those with serious criminal convictions.
The judge said that merely reviewing 50 cases did not mean all 50, or any of them, would be released. He also left open the possibility of reviewing more cases in the future.
The ACLU petition involves two detainees with underlying health conditions that the group says make COVID-19 particularly dangerous. Assistant U.S. Attorney Rayford Farquhar said Friday that the government proposed placing the detainees in their own 10-by-30-foot cells and giving them the ability to eat meals before other detainees. He likened it to the special hours grocery stores are setting aside for elderly customers during the crisis.
The ACLU's Dan McFadden said he would take the weekend to review that proposal with his clients and see whether it's acceptable.
The federal court hearing came the same day as the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court's ruling declaring a presumption for release from detention for defendants awaiting trial subject to certain restrictions, part of a widespread effort to reduce jail populations during the pandemic.
Judge Young has said that having fewer people in Bristol's House of Corrections would likely minimize the health risk of those who must remain behind bars. Attorneys for the government told Judge Young on Friday that no new detainees have been sent to Bristol, in line with the judge's recommendation when he first heard arguments in the recently filed suit.
The petitioners are represented by Ivan Espinoza-Madrigal, Oren N. Nimni and Oren M. Sellstrom of Lawyers for Civil Rights, Reena Parikh and Michael J. Wishnie of Yale Law School and Anand Balakrishnan, Eunice H. Cho, Adriana Lafaille, Daniel L. McFadden and Matthew Segal of the ACLU.
ICE and the sheriff's office are represented by Thomas E. Kanwit, Michael P. Sady and Rayford A. Farquhar of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Massachusetts.
The cases are Savino et al. v. Hodgson et al., case number 1:20-cv-10617, and McMenamin et al. v. Souza et al., case number 1:20-cv-10644, in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.
--Editing by Haylee Pearl.
For a reprint of this article, please contact reprints@law360.com.
