by Luna Reyna
In April, ACLU Analytics and researchers from Washington State University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Tennessee predicted that if the United States continued to operate jails and prisons as usual and refused to reduce the number of people incarcerated, estimated fatalities from the coronavirus would double. Currently, Washington state prisons have been exposed to COVID-19. Washington State Immigrant Detention Centers have been exposed to COVID-19. And now, the Federal Detention Center (FDC), SeaTac has been exposed. The people working in these facilities and detained in them are dying.
On August 12, Corrections Officer (CO) Seward arrived for his shift at FDC SeaTac exhibiting signs of sickness. When asked by detainees if he was all right, he explained that he had a headache, was hot, and was not feeling well. During this period, Seward made his rounds throughout the entire unit regularly. Since this unit was near maximum capacity, the unit was divided into two groups. Seward checked on the group of inmates who remained in their cells while others were passing time in the day room area, all the while wearing his mask halfway off his face, exposing his nose and mouth.
By 6 p.m., CO Seward requested to be seen by a medical officer, had his temperature taken and was confirmed to have a fever. Afterward, he remained at the facility and carried out his entire shift, which ended late that evening. According to Warden Israel Jacquez’s own written letter to Chief Judge Ricardo S. Martinez in April, FDC SeaTac was conducting “daily temperature checks and screenings of all staff prior to allowing them entry into the institution.”
But Seward was not sent home as per the current coronavirus protocols, and was never screened as Warder Jacquez claims is the procedure.
To make matters worse, Oscar Humberto Carrillo Salcedo, the unit’s inmate orderly, was tasked with cleaning Seward’s bathroom. “My client wasn’t provided anything extra and was expected to clean after an ill guard came to work,” explains Salcedo’s attorney, Talitha Hazelton.
For the next three days, all those detained in this unit were in close proximity to one another and free to remain in contact with other inmates. By Saturday, August 15th, an inmate complained of symptoms similar to those of CO Seward. He was tested three times for COVID-19 and each test came back positive, leading to the entire unit being put on lockdown.
While in lockdown, Assistant Warden (AW) Green visited the unit in order to answer any questions inmates may have had, but when he was asked why more immediate actions weren’t taken when CO Seward was experiencing symptoms, he was conveniently unresponsive. To add insult to deadly injury, when Salcedo expressed concerns about the COs wearing face masks improperly or not at all, “…officers took it in a joking manner and made coughing gestures towards the inmates,” according to Salcedo.
On August 17, the same day AW Green visited the unit, Salcedo was tested for COVID-19. By August 19, it was confirmed that he had tested positive. He was removed from his unit and placed in medical isolation (MI), which is standard procedure for inmates who test positive for the coronavirus. Eleven other inmates from his unit were moved to medical isolation because they tested positive with the virus as well.
Since Salcedo has been placed in MI, his access to the commissary has been revoked. His access to books or any other reading material has also been revoked. All personal items, including clothes and his radio, have been taken away. All phone privileges have been revoked. Even though Salcedo has regularly requested postage stamps in order to communicate with his attorney and family, he has been repeatedly ignored. “I have not been able to contact my family for the past 21 days,” Selcado wrote in the “Declaration of Defendant” that Hazelton filed on Sunday, September 6th. Salcedo is in MI because he contracted the virus, through no fault of his own. He was not placed in “disciplinary segregation.” But he has fewer privileges than if that were the case.
On August 23, while Salcedo and others were being isolated in MI, afraid for their lives and silenced, a petition filed by Columbia Legal Services that intended to push Gov. Jay Inslee & the Department of Corrections Secretary to take immediate and sweeping actions to prevent the spread of COVID-19 was denied. “On the record presented,” asserted Washington Supreme Court Chief Justice Debra Stephens, “the Petitioners have not shown the Respondents’ actions constitute deliberate indifference to the COVID-19 risk at the Department of Corrections facilities.”
According to the Bureau of Prisons database, of the 649 inmates at the Federal Detention Center, SeaTac, 36 inmates have tested positive, so far, after half the population was tested. The unfortunate truth is that through the BOP’s Compassionate Release Program, and as part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (“CARES”) Act, BOP has had the broad discretion to allow a reduction in the prison population adequate enough for social distancing to be possible. It has the authority to allow people like Salcedo, a 24-year-old college graduate, a young merchant marine, and a new father, a better chance at remaining COVID-19 free.
This would also allow for those who remained within the facilities to receive necessities like soap, showers, medical care, and general compassion under these new and dire circumstances. Instead, according to the BOP database, there are 1752 federal inmates and 643 BOP staff across the nation who have confirmed positive test results for COVID-19. So far, 118 inmates and 2 staff members have died due to complications from the disease.
Meanwhile, Salcedo has been provided no cleaning supplies to keep his cell clean while in MI. “We are forced to live in a dirty cell, and a dirty unit,” Salcedo explains in an August 24th letter to his attorney. “This unit is probably the filthiest in the building. Every unit I have been in has orderlies who constantly clean the day room and showers. We have taken three showers since being placed here and the showers have not been cleaned one time.” Not only was Salcedo denied daily showers, but he was also denied clean clothes. “I’ve been in the situation for almost a week,” Salcedo writes, “and have asked for clothes daily, just to be denied.”
It is unclear at this time whether he has received clean clothes, or how often. He was only able to send a letter to his attorney on August 24th because he had the chance to obtain a stamp from another inmate.
“The laziness and carelessness of the staff are putting my life in danger,” Salcedo writes. “I’ve been in here (MI) with no property and no clothes, waiting. Waiting to see if my body fights off COVID-19, waiting to die, waiting for change to happen.”
Hazelton also filed an Emergency Motion for Compassionate Release on Sept. 6th on Selcado’s behalf. In it, Salcedo explains that only after more than a week of MI did the medical staff come in to check in on Salcedo’s condition. During this singular visit, he writes, “Medical staff failed to provide any additional means for us or get better, to improve our well-being, or to simply alleviate the agonizing symptoms of COVID-19.”
The federal Bureau of Prisons has the second highest rate of total COVID-19 deaths in the country, according to The Marshall Project. Employing compassionate release could not only reduce the nearly 100,000 estimated deaths due to the failure to reduce jails, but it would release people like Salcedo who are non-violent and do not pose a threat to public safety, while saving taxpayers money.
For Salcedo, all he wants is to live—and to see his family again. “My dream and promise is to start all over; to see my son grow up; to be there for my fiancée and help her raise our son so she is not alone during such a difficult period; to take care of my parents, who are only getting older; to be there for my younger sisters.”
Luna Reyna is a South King County-based journalist. She is also the founder of RIZE Entertainment, an art, entertainment and culture company that focuses solely on artists who challenge injustice and champion equality through their art.
Featured image by Alex Garland
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