An immigrant becomes the sixth killed by COVID-19 in this Los Angeles County jail
Photo:
PAUL RATJE / AFP / Getty Images
Six inmates have died from COVID-19 in the federal prison FCI Terminal Island of San Pedro, in the county of The Angels, Californiawhere are reported 620 cases confirmed from coronavirus, the worst outbreak in the country's prison system.
The most recent victim is a immigrant identified as Eduardo Robles Holguín, 58, who was serving a 20-month sentence for re-entering the United States without documents.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) reported that he died on May 4 after being transferred to a hospital on April 25 where he was put on an artificial respirator the same day when he was diagnosed with COVID-19.
He had been incarcerated at the FCI Terminal Island since January 14, but 80 days later he died to become the sixth registered fatality inside this federal prison where 60% of its inmates are infected.
Robles Holguín was not in a prison of the Office for Immigration and Customs Control (ICE), where immigrants are held for administrative offenses, but in a BOP prison sentenced for a federal crime after criminal charges were brought against him for illegal re-entry into the country after being deported to Mexico in 2015.
San Pedro Terminal Island is a low level security prison that currently has 1,051 inmates and of which 620 are infected, indicates the most recent BOP report. Another 15 employees from the same prison also report themselves sick with the coronavirus.
As of Tuesday, May 5, in the entire prison system in charge of the BOP there have been 41 deaths from coronavirus and there are 2,066 confirmed cases. In other words, the San Pedro prison records 30% of all infections in the country's federal prisons.
The alarming situation in this prison has generated unrest among the relatives of the detainees who accuse the government of not doing enough to protect the inmates or the staff.
"Their lives matter," he said. Sandra hines The Long Beach Post newspaper, a local activist who last week organized a protest outside San Pedro prison. “They are people who broke the law, but they are still human beings. And they were not sentenced to death. "
