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Law360 (April 27, 2020, 7:51 PM EDT ) A month after ordering a group of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees freed over COVID-19 concerns, a Pennsylvania federal judge on Monday ordered most of them back behind bars after finding the virus had been largely contained within the facilities.
After issuing a temporary restraining order at the end of March releasing the 10 prisoners, U.S. District Judge John Jones III largely shot down a request to grant an injunction that would have allowed the detainees, all of whom suffer from underlying health conditions that make them particularly susceptible to COVID-19, to remain free in order to avoid contracting the virus.
Instead, the judge found that work by officials at the York County Prison and the Clinton County Correctional Facility, including frequent temperature checks and mask requirements, had resulted in only a single confirmed coronavirus case among the over 1,500 inmates housed at the two prisons.
"At the time of our writing nearly one month ago, it was reasonable to posit that it would only be a matter of time before COVID-19 decimated our prison populations," the judge said. "Thankfully, that feared outcome has generally not come to pass, largely due to the quick actions of facility officials."
The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit on behalf of the group in March, asking that they be freed from facilities where they were being detained in York, Clinton and Pike counties while awaiting the outcome of pending immigration cases.
The group argued that the facilities where they were being housed were unable to enact social distancing measures aimed at combating the spread of the virus and that their underlying medical conditions put them at heightened risk for potentially lethal complications from COVID-19.
In their complaint, the detainees described being housed in some instances alongside two other cellmates, using communal sinks and showers that were infrequently cleaned, and sharing meals prepared in unsanitary kitchens.
While Judge Jones initially agreed to release the group at the end of March, he said that subsequent actions taken at the York and Clinton County prisons had satisfied his concerns that the detainees would be placed in jeopardy if forced to remain at the facilities.
"The fears which we reasonably harbored of a 'tinderbox' scenario have largely failed to appear within those facilities," he said.
He couldn't say the same, however, for the Pike County Correctional Facility.
In Pike County, he said that despite enhanced safety measures at the facility, there had nonetheless been 40 confirmed cases of COVID-19 among inmates and staff, and two inmates had died of the virus.
Given the heightened safety measures at the York and Clinton County facilities, the judge agreed that the six detainees he'd released from the two prisons last month should be sent back into custody.
Two of the three detainees he'd freed from the Pike County facility, however, he agreed could be allowed to remain free given continuing concerns about the spread of COVID-19 there.
Despite the outbreak at the Pike County Correctional Facility, the judge said that the third detainee from the prison — Rigoberto Gomez-Hernandez — needed to be remanded back into custody given his history of violence against his wife.
"Conviction of a violent crime weighs heavily in favor of returning petitioner to detention," the judge said. "Therefore, and despite the reported cases at PCCF, we find that the public interest in preventing violent assaults outweighs the lessened risk COVID-19 will pose to petitioner Gomez-Hernandez due to the greatly enhanced infectious disease prevention measures now in place within PCCF."
Representatives for the parties did not immediately return messages seeking comment on Monday.
The detainees are represented by Witold Walczak, Vanessa Stine, Erika Nyborg-Burch and Muneeba Talukder, Eunice Cho, David Fathi, Omar Jadwat and Michael Tan of the ACLU, and Will Sachse, Thomas Miller, Carla Graff and Kelly Krellner of Dechert LLP.
The respondents are represented by Joanne Sanderson of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania.
The case is Bharatkumar Thakker et al. v. Clair Doll, case number 1:20-cv-00480, before the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania.
--Editing by John Campbell.
For a reprint of this article, please contact reprints@law360.com.
