ICE detainees bear brunt of COVID-19 spike in Nye County jails

Capt. David Boruchowitz, who oversees jail operations for the Nye County Sheriff’s Office, said Friday that the respiratory illness had spread quickly in recent weeks, as no inmates had tested positive during a round of testing completed about three weeks ago.

As of Friday, there were 30 confirmed cases among the inmate population at the Nye County Detention Center in Pahrump — 25 of which were reported on Tuesday alone. Of the known infected inmates, at least 23 — or nearly 77 percent — were U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees, according to the federal agency. None has died.

Boruchowitz said the current saturation of cases among ICE detainees likely resulted from the manner in which the Sheriff’s Office is adminstering this round of COVID-19 tests. On July 1, he said, 56 inmates were tested in the jail’s lower-security cell block, which houses nearly all of the 64 ICE detainees currently held at the jail. Testing was ongoing Friday.

ICE told the Las Vegas Review-Journal on Friday that it was following guidance from medical professionals and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention when deciding whether to release individuals in ICE custody.

A spokesperson for ICE declined to say how many inmates, if any at all, had been released from the Pahrump facility amid the recent outbreak. The federal agency learned of the first infected detainee on Monday.

About two hours north of the Pahrump jail, a Sheriff’s Office holding facility in Tonopah also saw a spike this week in COVID-19 cases among its inmates, with seven positive tests reported Thursday. Twenty-two of the 38 inmates currently held at the Tonopah jail were tested on July 1, Boruchowitz said.

There were just 11 cases of COVID-19 total in Tonopah as of Friday, meaning the infected inmates account for more than 60 percent of the town’s cases. Those were the first cases of the disease among inmates at the facility, according to Nye County COVID-19 statistics.

Meanwhile, COVID-19 first made its presence known inside the Pahrump jail on April 18, when a staff member had tested positive. A second jail employee tested positive two days later.

Following the first case, the Sheriff’s Office said it had placed its facilities on lockdown and adjusted staff scheduling, vowing to test every inmate and staff member.

By April 21, after the second staffer tested positive, the agency’s facilities had shifted to a “modified lockdown,” in which inmates were allowed time out of their cells only with their cellmates. Common areas were being disinfected between each cell release, and all staff and inmates were “wearing personal protective equipment to minimize exposure,” the agency said at the time.

Those same measures remained in effect on Friday, Boruchowitz said. Infected inmates are being kept quarantined together in a separate unit and will be re-tested in about two weeks.

The agency’s detention center and holding facilities are inspected on a quarterly basis by a member of the Nye County Board of County Commissioners, the Sheriff’s Office and Nye County Emergency Management.

According to an audit published in 2016, the most recent report available on the agency’s website, inspectors found “deficiencies during the year which included building leaks, plumbing leaks, missing equipment, air condition and heater vent cleaning issues and possible air quality issues.”

The audit did not further detail the possible air quality issues or corrective actions taken by the agency.

Since the onset of the pandemic, health officials at all levels — local, state and national — have characterized frequent hand-washing as a powerful preventative measure against the virus. Though a status update was not immediately available Friday, the 2016 audit report shows there were no bathroom facilities within four of the Pahrump detention center’s booking cells.

State administrative codes require lavatories be provided in each jail cell, and “inmates must have access twenty-four hours a day,” the audit states. At the time, the Sheriff’s Office said in its corrective action plan that it would research “the best method for this construction project.”

Contact Rio Lacanlale at rlacanlale@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0381. Follow @riolacanlale on Twitter. Review-Journal staff writer Katelyn Newberg contributed to this report.