In rural central Ohio, 60 percent of inmates at the 126-bed Morrow County Jail are detainees apprehended by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Three weeks ago, the jail had no positive cases of COVID-19. The first case appeared on April 22. Now, there are seven confirmed cases and eight probable cases out of the seventy-nine people currently held in the jail.
“There’s something very off,” says Tamara Carpenter, whose boyfriend is in Morrow County Jail for a parole violation. “They’ve just ignored this whole pandemic.”
“[Inmates] are supposed to rotate, wear a mask, and then put it in a plastic bag for three days, and then after those three days, the virus will be dead [and they wear it again]. They’re not washing masks or sanitizing them.”
On April 24, the ACLU of Ohio filed suit in federal court for the release of ICE detainees in Butler and Morrow counties, both of which have confirmed COVID-19 cases in their jails. All three were released on April 28, but dozens languish as the disease spreads.
Carpenter tells The Progressive that Morrow County Jail has begun to experience staffing problems as well: The company that provides hot meals quit on April 24. Three days later, the facility’s washing machine stopped working.
“They don’t give enough food right now, even the security doesn’t want to be around them,” says the sister of an ICE detainee who asked not to be identified for fear that it might hurt her brother’s case. Her brother was detained in February after he appeared for his check-in appointment with ICE in Columbus, Ohio. Now, he’s behind bars as the deadly virus spreads.
Advocates for Basic Legal Equality (ABLE) sued on behalf of another ICE detainee in Morrow, black Mauritanian national Saidu Sow. Detained for eighteen months, Sow tested positive for COVID-19 on April 24. Since getting his test results, Sow has not received medical attention.
“He’s at his wits’ end,” says Lynn Tramonte, director of Ohio Immigrant Alliance and Sow’s friend. “I think his fever got up to 104 and he was sitting in sweaty old smelly clothes, and they refused to give him Tylenol. It’s just super inhumane, and he does not deserve this.”
The ABLE lawsuit alleges that ICE knew the “likelihood” that Sow could contract COVID-19, given the conditions inside Morrow County Jail. “ICE’s inability to protect him from contracting this disease and their failure to release him amount to life-threatening violations of his constitutional right to due process,” the lawsuit states.
The framework of Sow’s lawsuit has been successfully used around the country to win the release of ICE detainees, especially in cases where immigrants have underlying medical conditions.
Morrow County Sheriff John Hinton maintains that the jail has always had soap for detainees, and did its best to protect against an outbreak. Hinton says that, since mid-March, inmates’ temperatures were checked three times a day, though family members of those detained dispute this. Once people showed signs and symptoms, Hinton said that they were isolated.
In a video Carpenter shared with The Progressive, her boyfriend, Tanner Depolo, said that they were still not wearing masks and weren’t given any extra soap, although they did have shampoo now. “Everybody’s together, two feet apart,” he added.
“Clearly, it was about money for them. And at a certain point it will cost more for them to take care of an entire jail of sick immigrants.”
After the first positive case on April 22, the jail issued personal protective equipment to all inmates and staff. “Prior to the positive case, no one was wearing PPE inside the facility,” Hinton told WBNS 10TV. “Being a rural county, I have just enough [PPE]. It’s one of those ‘you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ kind of things. So if you issue it, you know, are you just burning through PPE. If you don’t issue it, you run into a problem like we have now.”
Hinton did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Progressive.
Carpenter says there are still no soap dispensers, and not all guards are wearing masks or gloves. “[Inmates] are supposed to rotate, wear a mask, and then put it in a plastic bag for three days, and then after those three days, the virus will be dead [and they wear it again],” she adds. “They’re not washing masks or sanitizing them.”
But, Carpenter says, sanitation issues are only the beginning of Morrow County Jail’s problems: “It’s been like this for a long time. Finally, something came along to trigger a magnifying glass on Morrow County.” Even as a pandemic overtakes the globe, Ohio counties like Morrow are still struggling to deal with the opioid epidemic, and the jail is no exception.
In mid-April,, emergency services were summoned to the jail three times in response to drug overdoses, according to public records obtained by The Progressive.
At about 1:30 a.m. on April 11, first responders administered doses of Narcan, the drug used to counteract a drug overdose. At around 7:30 that same morning, emergency responders returned to the jail to administer another dose of Narcan. Just more than an hour after that, another inmate hit his head, and first responders were called in to staunch the bleeding and take care of the injury.
The following day, April 12, first responders returned and administered twelve milligrams of Narcan to a twenty-two-year-old man after he experienced cardiac arrest from a possible drug overdose. As of 2018, Ohio has one of the highest opioid-related death rates in the country.
Carpenter says this is not the first time the jail has encountered this problem. “There’s drugs smuggled into there all the time. When they book them in, they don’t properly search them.”
The overdose records also raise questions about the longstanding policy of ICE contracting with local jails for beds. Four counties in Ohio—Morrow, Butler, Geauga, and Seneca—contract with ICE to rent beds in the county jails. Tramonte says this is the strategy: In rural counties, immigrants are far from legal help.
“It’s purely trying to undermine their legal rights,” she says.
Since 2009, Morrow County has had such a contract with ICE. As of August 1, 2019, Morrow County Jail was receiving $68.83 per bed each day from ICE. In addition, Morrow’s contract stipulates that the jail will provide and ICE will pay for any needed transportation services.
“I don’t know if they could keep the jail open if they didn’t have the immigration detainees,” Tramonte says. “Clearly, it was about money for them. And at a certain point it will cost more for them to take care of an entire jail of sick immigrants. Who knows if there will be other types of legal actions brought against them for not having soap, for example.”
Advocates in Ohio have called on the jails to suspend their contracts with ICE and help facilitate the release of detainees who they say are put unnecessarily at risk of contracting COVID-19. Morrow County can suspend its contract with ICE by giving a sixty-day notice.
The fear of exposure to opioids only amplifies ICE detainees’ distress inside the jail, says Tramonte.
“These are grown men, and suddenly they are in there for a civil violation and have no control over their lives,” Tramonte says. “I think a lot of them were struggling with anxiety and really worrying about their own safety and feeling like they were powerless to protect themselves.”
In a study released on April 27, experts at several universities used existing data to model virus transmissibility inside ICE detention facilities if their numbers were not significantly reduced. The optimistic scenario predicted that 72 percent of individuals would be infected within the next 90 days, and in a more pessimistic scenario, 100 percent would be infected.
“This is a crisis that ICE created, and it was foreseeable,” Tramonte says. “Nobody can say they haven’t been warned.”