Zepeda Rivas v. Jennings

Background

The plaintiffs are immigration detainees held at two California facilities. One, Mesa Verde Detention Center, is operated by GEO Group under a contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The other is a Yuba County jail operated by the local sheriff that also holds immigration detainees under an ICE contract. The plaintiffs alleged that ICE and its contractors were deliberately indifferent to the health risks posed by COVID-19.

The court had previously issued a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction requiring, among other things, a continuing process for considering whether detainees could be released on bail. This motion sought a second preliminary injunction, particularly concerning conditions at Mesa Verde. The defendants argued that the earlier outbreak had subsided, that conditions had changed, and that additional intrusive relief was no longer justified.

Court’s Analysis

For a preliminary injunction, the plaintiffs had to show a likely success on the merits, likely irreparable harm without an injunction, a favorable balance of hardships, and that an injunction served the public interest. The court relied on a Ninth Circuit decision concerning unconstitutional COVID-19 risks in an immigration detention facility, which held that district courts have broad authority to order measures needed to remedy likely constitutional violations while avoiding unnecessary micromanagement.

The court found substantial evidence that officials had acted with deliberate indifference toward detainees at Mesa Verde. The court identified the defendants’ conscious avoidance of widespread detainee and staff testing, their failure to create a facility-specific outbreak plan despite repeated warnings, their failure to quarantine new arrivals as represented, and their handling of symptomatic and exposed detainees during the summer outbreak. The court also found that declarations and testimony by ICE officials contained false statements, including statements about quarantine procedures and the timing of efforts to clear a women’s dormitory.

The court concluded that Mesa Verde’s dormitory layout and limited number of individual cells made the facility especially difficult to manage during an outbreak. It found that COVID-19 continued to pose a serious risk because of new positive tests among staff and rising case rates in the surrounding area. The court also determined that the defendants’ late-issued intake plan did not eliminate the need for relief because it did not address another outbreak, was vague, and depended on officials whose earlier conduct had undermined confidence in their ability to carry it out.

Scope of the Injunction

The court ordered the defendants to continue reserving a dormitory for detainees who test positive. It required screening and a point-of-care test for every new intake, isolation in an individual cell for an intake who continued to refuse testing, and a separate dormitory for negative new arrivals to quarantine. New arrivals could be placed in the same cohort only if they arrived within 48 hours of one another, and the quarantine period was set at 14 days.

The defendants were required to limit each general-population dormitory so detainees could sleep at least six feet apart. The cap did not apply to the dormitory for positive cases. The defendants also had to provide rapid COVID-19 testing every week to Mesa Verde detainees and staff, subject to an exception for people who had tested positive within the previous 90 days unless they developed symptoms.

The order required isolation and testing of symptomatic detainees, immediate testing and quarantine of close contacts after a positive staff or detainee test, and immediate movement of positive detainees to the positive-case dormitory. It limited transfers out of Mesa Verde to specified purposes, including medical care, medical isolation or quarantine, certain security concerns, release, removal, or preventing overcrowding. The defendants also had to report new positive tests and file weekly reports covering testing, staffing, housing, active cases, hospitalizations, and new intakes.

The court rejected the plaintiffs’ proposed restrictions on transfers among facilities because those restrictions would improperly micromanage ICE’s detention system and were unnecessary given the other ordered measures. The court also determined that exit testing after intake quarantine was not necessary on the record before it.

Disposition

The plaintiffs’ motion for a second preliminary injunction was granted in part. The defendants and their officers, agents, employees, attorneys, and others covered by the order were required to follow the measures in Section V while the case remained pending. The order stated that it did not disturb the earlier preliminary injunction, which remained in effect.