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BROOKLYN WEEKLY, APRIL 5, 2020
‘IT’S BASICALLY TORTURE’
Coronavirus case at ICE detention center stokes fear
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BY ROSE ADAMS
Jessica was at home in
Brooklyn one February
morning when a group of immigration
agents knocked
on her door, claiming they
were looking for a man by
an unfamiliar name. At
fi rst, she didn’t realize they
worked for US Immigration
and Customs Enforcement.
“They had ‘ICE’ written
on their shoulder, but they
were covering it. It just said
‘Police,'” said Jessica, who
declined to give her last
name out of fear of reprisal.
Unable to fi nd their suspect,
the offi cers left. But
hours later, they turned
up at the workplace of Jessica’s
partner — a native of
Mexico — and took him into
their custody.
“They went to his job and
picked him up,” said Jessica,
who was pregnant at
the time. “They came on the
phone and said, ‘He’ll call
you when he can.’”
Offi cials fi rst placed Jessica’s
partner in a New York
City immigration facility
before moving him to New
Jersey’s Essex County Correctional
Facility. On March
4, he was moved again to the
Bergen County Jail in New
Jersey — about a week after
his and Jessica’s baby was
born.
Then, coronavirus began
to spread.
On March 23, an inmate
at the Bergen County Jail
tested positive for the novel
coronavirus, prompting offi -
cials to lockdown the facility
and place 15 of the jail’s 450-
plus inmates in quarantine.
Following public outcry,
a Manhattan judge ordered
on Thursday that 10 inmates
with underlying health conditions
be released from various
New Jersey jails, including
from Bergen County.
However, family members
like Jessica fear that
the facility’s poor conditions
will allow the disease to
spread like wildfi re, despite
the recent precautions.
“The place is basically
torture. It’s dirty,
fi lthy,” said Jessica, adding
that the jail has grown
so crowded that offi cials
have relocated inmates to
a facility previously used
for solitary confi nement.
“The cells they have them
in are made for one person,
but they have two people
in them.”
Relatives of other inmates
echoed Jessica’s worries,
and added that authorities
often don’t give inmates
their full medications on
time, increasing their vulnerability
to the virus.
“There are people in
there that suffer from high
blood pressure and asthma,
and they’re not receiving
their full medication,” said
Maria, whose family member
is being held at the Hudson
County Correctional
Facility. “They’re in grave
danger.”
Correctional offi cers
have also allowed misinformation
to run rampant in
the jail, Jessica said, sparking
fear among the inmates,
who relate the rumors to
their families over phone
calls.
“I don’t know if the correctional
offi cers are bullying
them, but they said that
there are 50 cases of coronavirus
in the jail,” Jessica
said. “He called me. He was
crying.”
In protest of the conditions,
dozens of detainees
across all four New Jersey
detention centers have begun
a hunger strike, activists
say. On Friday, protesters
drove to the Bergen
County Jail to stand in solidarity
with the strikers and
demand that New Jersey
Governor Phil Murphy release
the 1,500 inmates in
ICE’s custody.
Spokespeople for ICE
and for the Bergen County
Jail did not immediately respond
to requests for comment.
“They don’t have gloves
or masks or anything —
they don’t have the necessary
equipment to protect
themselves,” said Victoria
Ramirez, whose partner is
also being detained in Bergen
county. “They have to
spend time with their family
in these conditions.”
Coronavirus cases among ICE detainees sparked concern over the conditions in detention centers.
REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson
BY KEVIN DUGGAN
An 86-year-old woman died
at Woodhull Hospital on March
28 after a 32-year-old fellow patient
allegedly shoved her to the
ground for not practicing social
distancing.
The victim was walking in the
emergency room of the city-run
medical facility on the Bedford-
Stuyvesant-Bushwick border
just after 2 pm when, authorities
say, she stopped and held onto the
younger woman’s intravenous
pole.
The alleged assailant got mad
at the victim because she wasn’t
keeping a safe distance to prevent
the spread of the coronavirus, a
spokesman for the Police Department
said. The younger woman
then pushed the older woman to
the ground, causing her to knock
her head and lose consciousness.
Hospital police escorted the
younger woman off of the hospital
premises and released her.
The victim was pronounced dead
just before 5:40 pm and police are
now looking for the suspect on felony
assault charges, the spokesman
said.
The charges could be upgraded
to homicide, depending on
the autopsy by the city’s Medical
Examiner, according to the police
spokesman.
A spokeswoman for the Medical
Examiner’s offi ce did not immediately
return a request
for comment.
Neither of the women
were in the hospital for
treatment related to
COVID-19, according to
the police spokesman,
who said that the victim
was in the healthcare
facility for bowel obstruction
and her alleged
attacker for seizure treatment.
An 86-year-old woman died after a fellow patient
at Woodhull Hospital knocked her out on
March 28. Photo by Google
Woman kills 86-year-old over failure to socially distance