Last week, staff tested every single detainee at the Farmville Detention Center in Virginia for COVID-19. The results showed that the virus had spread extensively through the facility: 93% of the detainees whose results have been reported have tested positive for the virus, with another 80 tests pending. At least 6 detainees have been hospitalized with severe symptoms, according to court documents.

Though an ICE spokesperson claimed in an email to WAMU/DCist that “the majority of detainees who tested positive are asymptomatic,” detainees and their lawyers describe an environment where many people are actively exhibiting symptoms associated with COVID-19, and where people fear they will die of complications from the virus.

“We have clients calling and saying that they want us to try and arrange a way for them to see their family, because they feel like they’re going to die in detention,” says Brian Casson, an immigration attorney who has three clients in the facility.

Farmville staff initially confirmed the presence of coronavirus in the detention center at the end of April, when two detainees who were transferred from another facility in Virginia tested positive for the virus. They were asymptomatic, and were isolated until they tested negative, according to a sworn declaration submitted by Farmville Director Jeffrey Crawford as part of an ongoing lawsuit against ICE over its coronavirus response at Farmville.

Then, at the beginning of June, ICE transferred 74 people to Farmville from detention centers in Florida and Arizona, two states that had become coronavirus hotspots. An ICE spokesperson told WAMU/DCist last month that the transfers were part of the agency’s strategy to “promote social distancing wherever possible” and free up space in the other facilities.

Ultimately, 51 of those detainees ended up testing positive for the coronavirus. And though ICE says it isolated new arrivals to the facility from the rest of the people being detained, the virus seemed to spread throughout the facility following their arrival.

The situation grew increasingly urgent towards the end of June, when clients of several immigration lawyers who spoke with WAMU/DCist began reporting symptoms of the virus. This week, results of universal testing in the facility confirmed the extent of the virus’s spread: Crawford’s sworn declaration said that of the 366 detainees recently tested for the virus, 267 tested positive, 19 tested negative, and 80 results were still pending.

ICE has not updated its website with the latest numbers confirmed by the court documents; As of Friday afternoon, its official website was reporting only 102 active confirmed COVID-19 cases in the facility. 

“For us, the officials are the ones responsible,” says Rafael, who is currently detained at Farmville and preferred not to disclose his last name for privacy reasons. Rafael recently tested positive for the virus, though he says he currently has no symptoms.

He questioned the decision of ICE officials to transfer people from out-of-state facilities to Farmville without proper precautions. “They wanted to see us sick,” says Rafael.

“There’s a lot of people that are scared for their lives and are saying they can’t stand up,” says Adina Appelbaum, an attorney with CAIR Coalition. “They can’t eat. They’re having trouble breathing. People are passing out on the floor. People are unable to stand up for count.”

José, a detainee at Farmville who asked that WAMU/DCist only use his first name, says he has a headache, pain in his eyes and chills. He has felt sick for two weeks, and received only Tylenol. He says “everyone” around him is sick — and he estimates that out of his 70 people in his dorm, he only knows of only “about two” people whose COVID-19 tests came back negative.

He has been detained since March for possession of marijuana, according to his lawyer.

José says one person in his dorm recently had a panic attack, and started “crying and screaming.” José says he had also cried himself. He’s been trying to read to keep his mind off of things, and sleep when he can. He feels like staff have reacted callously to the suffering of detainees.

“As I said to them one time, ‘We’re people being kept in here, not animals,” he says. “They tell me this is something serious and very important, but … if that were true, they wouldn’t be letting people die in here.”

In some cases, people detained at the facility have organized protests against their conditions and been met with force for doing so, according to court documents. Crawford’s sworn declaration details two instances where guards used pepper spray on detainees. In the first case, Crawford claimed that three detainees who were asked to move dorms after testing positive “became violent” and a guard pepper sprayed two of them. In the second instance, which Crawford said happened on July 1, guards used pepper spray on a group of detainees who “refused to comply with the 10:30 a.m. count.”

Immigration attorneys denied ICE’s claim that the protests were violent.

A man detained in the facility, who asked for anonymity, told WAMU/DCist last month that guards used pepper spray on men who were too weak to stand for count; It was not clear whether he was referring to the same incident as Crawford.

Two people nationwide have died from COVID-19 in ICE custody. Sirine Shebaya, Executive Director of the National Immigration Project and lead counsel on a lawsuit brought against ICE by National Immigration Project, CAIR Coalition, and Legal Aid Justice Center, calls those deaths “preventable.” She says ICE “willfully and neglectfully ignored public health advice and kept people in conditions that all but ensured that they were going to get COVID-19.”

But, Shebaya added, even those who survive the virus “are possibly going to have really permanent negative health effects.” The Atlantic recently reported on coronavirus “long-haulers,” who have continued to experience debilitating symptoms months after the virus’s onset. 

In a statement emailed to WAMU/DCist, ICE says it “has taken important steps to mitigate the spread [of COVID-19] in its detention centers.” The agency has said it houses symptomatic detainees who test positive, detainees who test positive and are asymptomatic, and those who test negative in separate parts of the facility. And it says it provides ample personal protective equipment, temperature screenings, handwashing sinks and hand sanitizer.

In addition, Crawford said in his sworn declaration that “each detainee is evaluated by a medical professional twice a day and given over-the-counter medications upon request.”

But immigration attorneys say the medical treatment at the facility is inadequate. They are pushing for ICE to release people from Farmville, particularly those who are the most medically vulnerable to the virus because of their underlying conditions.

ICE says that nationally, it has released more than 900 people from detention because of their medical risk factors. But Edith Hinson, a CAIR Coalition attorney, says she has not been able to secure release for any of her clients.

“We have folks … who have AIDS, folks who have heart problems, diabetes,” says Hinson. In response to petitions for release, Hinson says ICE officials have in some cases been terse in their responses.

“We get back at most a one-sentence response saying, ‘We’ve considered this, and we’re not going to release them pending their case.’’

This story has been updated to correct Sirine Shebaya’s title as Executive Director of the National Immigration Project and to add that National Immigration Project, CAIR Coalition and Legal Aid Justice Center are all involved in the lawsuit against ICE.