This story was told by a person incarcerated at an ICE/Private-Contractor facility.
Caller: Okay. So, I was incarcerated before this whole COVID came up. When it reached the facility that I was at, I was on the cleanup crew. And the first person that got the COVID in the facility was one of the staff members that had traveled to Europe and came back with it.
A couple of us were asked to go and clean up and disinfect the area, not knowing that it had been infected with COVID. They just told us that we just had to clean it up and disinfect it.
We cleaned it up. And, unfortunately, they never warned us. So, we went in there, and we cleaned it up. After we were done, they quarantined us, and they told us that we had to get quarantined because, technically, we had been exposed to this COVID.
Me and my partner ended up being negative with it, but there was an outbreak that broke out throughout the whole facility. And a couple of months down the road, I ended up catching it regardless.
UCI: Damn.
Caller: That was one of the first ones in the county to catch it. And while I was quarantined, it was a pretty scary process because there wasn’t really any information provided to us and it was all new to us. While I was there, I’d seen another inmate that must have had other physical problems, health problems, because he ended up dying in there.
UCI: Damn.
Caller: And to us, there were really no answers to all of our questions. So, it’s pretty scary. And they weren’t giving us no releases or anything. So, we were just sitting there with really not much hopes.
So, I sat there quarantined. And after I got cleared medically from my COVID after I had caught it, I kept getting rehoused in different areas of the jail because of this whole COVID issue.
And there were other inmates that would catch in the same facility, and we would get quarantined again. Then we would get rehoused and they would put us with other people that still had it. So, it was just it was pretty scary, honestly.
It was intimidating, knowing that, after we had already caught it, they’re still exposing us back and forth with it. And there was nothing we could do about it because it had spread out throughout the whole facility.
UCI: That’s crazy.
Caller: Yeah. Yeah. There were guys that were coming in off of the streets that were testing negative when they brought them in. And they were putting them in units where there was a lot of us that had already had it.
Some of us were still testing positive for it even though they had cleared us. And they were still putting guys in there. Once we made it past that – like I said, once we were already cleared, they were still mixing everybody up.
And that whole thought of catching it again was pretty concerning, because especially, like I said, to me and from my experience, I got to see somebody pass away from it. And it’s really intimidating.
UCI: Wow.
Caller: Yeah. So, even to this last month, there was still another inmate that caught the COVID. And they were telling us, with this new strand and even though we had our vaccines now and everything, that there was still a possibility that we could still get it.
So, it’s been an ongoing, over a year now, issue with the COVID. And when I left the prison yard, I still left from a yard that was in quarantine because there was somebody there with COVID and we were exposed.
And then they brought me here, and they quarantined me again. But it’s still a- it’s still a concern. You know, as long as we’re in an institution, there’s really nothing we could to do prevent ourselves from it. All the staff is the ones that walk in and out of the facility and that could technically bring it in to us. And we could still catch it again, apparently.
