Colorado immigration detention center put unit on a brief tuberculosis quarantine this month, detainees say
Published in News & Features
DENVER — The Aurora immigration detention center placed a housing unit on a brief quarantine earlier this month after detainees were told they’d been exposed to tuberculosis, according to interviews with advocates and two people housed in the pod.
Federal and facility officials did not provide comment on the reports, despite multiple requests from The Denver Post in the past week, and local health officials said they had not received any information about a new case of the respiratory disease. The quarantine, which lasted three days, included mass testing of the dozens of men housed in the unit, according to advocates and the two detainees.
The reports come three months after officials confirmed that another detainee tested positive for tuberculosis in June, sparking a weekslong standoff between state health inspectors and the facility over a subsequent investigation that is now being challenged in federal court.
Two detainees in one of the facility’s housing pods told The Post last week that they were placed on a quarantine that started Sept. 11 and ended three days later. Signs were posted inside the pod advising detainees they were in isolation, both men said. Masks were also distributed to the unit’s occupants, said Andrea Loya, the executive director of Casa de Paz, which works with people detained in the facility.
Those housed in the unit were restricted from entering or leaving the area, the detainees said. The entire pod — which houses between 80 and 90 men — was given skin tests for tuberculosis, they said.
Rony Chavez Martinez said medical staff told the pod’s occupants that they had been exposed to tuberculosis. He said a new arrival who was visibly ill joined the pod earlier this month and was later taken away.
The other man who spoke to The Post, Ronald Aguirre, said a member of the medical staff told him and others that the ill man had tested positive for TB.
But on Monday evening, Chavez Martinez said the ill man had returned to the unit and made comments indicating that he did not have TB.
The facility is privately owned and operated by Geo Group, a private prison company, on a contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. At maximum, it can house up to 1,530 people.
Last week, Loya, from Casa de Paz, and AnnaRose Craig, from the American Friends Service Committee — which also works with detainees — said they had separately spoken with three detainees from the same pod. Their accounts of the incident and quarantine matched descriptions provided by the two detainees who spoke with The Post.
Geo spokesman Christopher Ferreira referred comment to ICE last week. The Post sent four emails to spokespeople for the Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE, in the past week; on Monday, a representative said that they were “working on” responding but did not provide comment by The Post’s deadline.
Health officials in Adams County and with the state told The Post on Monday that they had not received any new information about suspected or confirmed tuberculosis cases at the facility.
Copies of 911 call logs obtained by The Post do not indicate any ambulance calls to Geo last week or during the quarantine period.
After the earlier TB case was identified in June, ICE officials said there were no additional infections in the facility.
Staff from U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper’s office visited the facility Friday morning and saw masked Geo staff in two pods, including the one where the quarantine was said to have taken place. Geo medical staff and ICE personnel refused to answer questions about any recent TB cases, testing or quarantines, Hickenlooper’s office said. The senator’s staff saw detainees in the facility’s medical monitoring units, though it was unclear why they were being held there.
“Public health officials can’t stop a TB outbreak they’re not allowed to track,” Hickenlooper said in a statement Friday. “ICE’s refusal to follow Colorado law or give members of Congress answers puts lives at risk.”
U.S. Rep. Jason Crow’s office also conducted a visit at the facility, including the pod where the detainees reported the quarantine, on Sept. 11. His staff members were told that there were no communicable diseases present in the facility, according to a report posted earlier this week.
His staff also counted seven detainees under medical monitoring, though the report says: “ICE and GEO would not elaborate on why the detainees were being monitored.”
Illnesses, particularly respiratory diseases, are common in the detention center, advocates and several current and former detainees have told The Post. Adams County health officials investigated a suspected outbreak earlier this year; the investigation did not identify any outbreaks, though health officials said their inquiry was frustrated by a lack of cooperation from facility staff.
As advocates and detainees raised concerns about the recent quarantine, Geo is still trying to fight off health officials’ investigation of the prior case.
That earlier infection was confirmed to public health officials in June, but Geo stopped cooperating with Adams County’s investigation into the incident, local health officials have said. That prompted first the county and then the state to issue public health orders directing the facility to turn over information about the case.
Geo refused to provide that information, and the state Department of Public Health and Environment filed a lawsuit last month to force compliance with the public health order. That lawsuit is ongoing.
On Sept. 3, ICE and Geo revised their contract, adding new language that requires Geo to obtain “preclearance” from the federal government before turning over information about ICE detainees to third parties, like local health officials. That change was disclosed in court filings earlier this month.
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