Letter to DOJ: Protections for Medically Vulnerable Detainees

The New York Civil Liberties Union and Prisoners’ Legal Services wrote to the Department of Justice to ask them to apply protections won on behalf of petitioners in Jones v. Wolf to all medically vulnerable detainees at Batavia.

Read the letter

The Court in Jones determined being housed at Batavia in communal settings without appropriate social distancing measures violates the due process rights of petitioners who are medically vulnerable according to the CDC guidelines, and ordered ICE to develop a plan for implementing such measures for them. Given ICE now is on notice that people with at least one of these risk factors are medically vulnerable, we ask that ICE commit to extending, at a minimum, the same protections to them as to the medically vulnerable petitioners in Jones and release any of these individuals for whom the facility cannot implement these measures.