United States District Judge Marcia G. Cooke, a federal judge in Miami, has ordered the release of most U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees at three Florida facilities on Thursday, according to a recent article.

Cooke cited the ICE authorities' failure "to protect the safety and general well-being of the petitioners," "cruel and unusual punishment," and "deliberate indifference" to the conditions at these facilities amidst the COVID-19 outbreak in the U.S.

The federal judge also pointed out that social distancing in some of these facilities is not implemented.

"Further, ICE has failed to provide detainees in some detention centers with masks, soap and other cleaning supplies, and failed to ensure that all detainees housed at the three detention centers can practice social distancing," Cooke wrote.


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Meanwhile, two guards at an immigration detention center in Louisiana have died after testing positive for COVID-19. Relatives of both Carl Lenard, 62, and Stanton Johnson, 51, claimed the Richwood Correctional Center in Monroe, Louisiana, had at one point told them not to wear masks as the virus spread through the facility.

Immigration rights activists claim many of the detention facilities are unhygienic and increase the chances of infecting their detainees.

Rebecca Sharpless, director of the University of Miami School of Law's Immigration Clinic, asserted that ICE would essentially find a loophole just to keep the detainees in its custody by moving some of them to other facilities.

In a media statement, Sharpless said that "judicial oversight is sorely needed" because these detainees live in "crowded conditions" where they eat and sleep "within less than six feet of one another."

It can be recalled that a few days ago, ICE lawyers told a federal court in Miami that it has "no basis" for any oversight of "ICE's administration of its sound policies."

"Such an order is unnecessarily broad, unduly burdensome and unwarranted," the agency said in a filing Friday. The Herald pointed out that it said: "a twice-weekly report would not yield more meaningful information than a report filed once every two weeks, or, at a minimum, once a week."

According to ICE, it has about 30,000 people detained and started testing its detainees. As of this writing, the agency said it has tested 705 detainees but expects to receive 2,000 tests a month from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to ramp up testing.

As of this writing, the United States has already recorded 1.13 million COVID-19 cases nationwide, with 65,603 deaths.

According to an article by Latin Post, mass releasing of detainees, as requested by Cooke, will only be a mistake and may do more harm than good because they may endanger public safety, especially if it involves those with criminal records.

Furthermore, ICE lawyers insist that releasing the detainees may also increase their risk of getting infected with COVID-19.