ICE detainees released from crowded Bristol County jail as tensions rise amid coronavirus crisis

DARTMOUTH — U.S. District Court Judge William Young released three undocumented immigrants without criminal records into house arrest in an effort to reduce the number of detainees at the Bristol County jail and slow the spread of the coronavirus inside the crowded facility.

Another six had been voluntarily released by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Sheriff Thomas Hodgson said there are 48 detainees who eat and sleep in a single room at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center he manages in Dartmouth. Another 42 share a different room nearby. About 40 more are housed in Bristol County House of Correction.

Civil rights groups who argued for the releases in a recently filed federal lawsuit described the detention center as “a tinderbox, that once sparked will engulf the facility.”

The lawsuit claims that detainees cannot maintain 6 feet of social distance in dormitories where they sleep in closely packed bunk beds. Detainees also have limited access to soap and other sanitary products, according to the lawsuit.

A spokesman for the sheriff said detainees have “plenty of soap” and that staff have banned visitations and ramped up sanitation efforts at Bristol County’s jails, which include the House of Correction, the ICE detention center, a separate jail for women and a fourth jail in New Bedford.

Tensions over safety at ICE’s detention center reached a breaking point last Tuesday after a group of ICE detainees ceased to wash laundry, serve food or clean the facility to protest overcrowding and other conditions they said were conducive to the possible spread of COVID-19.

An activist group, Bristol County for Correctional Justice, reported that sheriff’s deputies responded by entering the detention center with guns drawn.

Jonathan Darling, a spokesman for the sheriff, disputed those claims, saying that only one deputy was armed with a “pepper ball gun” that they did not point at detainees. He said the conflict began when a detainee who did not agree with the work stoppage was assaulted by protestors.

“After we removed the victim from the unit for medical attention, the non-working detainees took all the tables and barricaded themselves behind them on one side of the room and refused to come out,” Darling said.

The sheriff diffused the conflict Tuesday, according to Darling, who said the detainees ended their work stoppage that night.

But fears inside the jail have only escalated since the protest, according to activists who have spoken with detainees by phone.

A nurse at the facility tested positive for COVID-19 Wednesday, sowing panic throughout the crowded dormitory. The nurse had developed a fever near the end of an overnight shift a week earlier that saw her working in the ICE detention center. Darling said she has not returned to work and that no detainee nor any other staff members have reported symptoms of COVID-19 to the sheriff.

Though nine ICE detainees were released into house arrest by a judge on Friday in an effort to reduce the spread of the coronavirus, around 130 remain incarcerated at the Bristol County House of Correction and the nearby ICE detention facility, which share correctional and medical staff. The former facility also houses an additional 567 convicts and criminal defendants who are awaiting trial but have not posted bail.

Inmates incarcerated under Massachusetts criminal laws will soon have a separate process for requesting temporary release from custody during the pandemic, which the state’s Supreme Judicial Court is devising in response to a lawsuit filed by a coalition of criminal defense organizations.

Detainees and inmates throughout Bristol County’s jail complex in Dartmouth live in close quarters, sharing many objects and surfaces. A survey of Massachusetts sheriffs conducted by the Supreme Judicial Court found that Bristol County maintained one of the most crowded jails in the state.