Coronavirus Outbreak: Federal Judge Orders Four ICE Detainees Released In Wake Of Virus Threat
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) -- A federal judge has ordered immigration authorities to release four detainees from custody in California because their health conditions put them at risk of a fatal coronavirus infection.
U.S. District Court Judge Maxine Chesney made the ruling Wednesday in a case presented by the ACLU.
"I feel blessed that my husband is coming home," Shelly Clements, the wife of Charles Joseph, one of the plaintiffs ordered released, said in a press release.
Collectively the four plaintiffs suffer from a range of serious medical conditions, which the CDC has identified as placing people at a particularly high risk of contracting this highly contagious disease.
Salmon Medina Calderon has been diagnosed with diabetes. He has lost all of the vision in one eye and 70 percent in the other. Gennady V. Lavrus also has diabetes that requires insulin injections. Charles Joseph suffers from severe asthma. J. Elias Solario Lopez, 82, has a history of hypertension and kidney disease.
"This decision is an important step," said William Freeman, senior counsel at the ACLU Foundation of Northern California. "The stakes for the release of detained persons are at an all-time high as the threat of the COVID-19 outbreak places them at an elevated risk of serious ailments or death."
San Francisco Public Defender Manohar Raju said that the judge recognized that releasing vulnerable immigrants because of the COVID pandemic was urgent and in the interest of public health.
"Immigrants in ICE detention centers should be released immediately," Raju said. "It is unfortunate we had to resort to the courts for this relief, ICE should be doing this on its own."
Federal immigration officials have not commented on the court decision.