During a hearing on a lawsuit filed on behalf of four detainees, Brinkema chastised U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Immigration Centers of America, the company that operates the facility, for not doing more to prevent infections, noting that the virus quickly began to spread there in June after 74 detainees were brought in from detention centers in Arizona and Florida without first being quarantined.
The lawsuit, filed in Alexandria’s U.S. District Court, claims that 51 of those transfers later tested positive in an outbreak where 259 detainees are being monitored for the virus, nearly all of the facility’s population, according to ICE.
“You have this large movement of people from two hot areas on June 2 and, by June 22, you’ve got a significant increase in the [virus]-positive infection rate at the facility,” Brinkema said. “The only factor that was changed is that influx of new people, which is incredibly dramatic and seems to indicate that some terrible mistake was made along the way.”
An ICE spokeswoman declined to comment on the hearing but reiterated an earlier statement saying that the health, welfare and safety of immigrant detainees “is one of the agency’s highest priorities.”
The outbreak in central Virginia has worried state health officials working to reverse a steady rise in cases since shutdown restrictions were loosened in June.
Last month, Gov. Ralph Northam (D) and both of the state’s U.S. senators asked President Trump to allow the CDC to step in after Immigration Centers of America repeatedly turned down offers from the state health department for help with testing.
State officials say they’ve had little authority to intervene because the center is operated under a federal contract.
On Monday, the CDC sent a 10-person team of scientists to assess the crisis, with plans for additional testing of detainees and staff. The agency is scheduled to deliver its findings to ICE on Friday.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs in the lawsuit have argued that an independent public health expert should be brought in to conduct a more thorough review of the facility’s conditions, including availability of personal protective equipment.
Brinkema appeared poised Tuesday to grant at least a portion of that request, ordering ICE to allow the attorneys and the public health expert to listen in when CDC officials share their findings by teleconference to determine what other types of monitoring should be added.
That step, and ordering that no one else be brought into the facility until there is proof that proper safety measures are in place, would help the detainees, the facility’s staff and the surrounding community, the judge said.
“People who work in this facility go home at night,” she said. “They shop in the local stores, they go to the local churches, they have their families.”