Texas immigrant advocates are calling for Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to release detainees, especially medically vulnerable immigrants, from detention facilities to await their hearings in a safe place as the new coronavirus continues to spread.

“These detention facilities often provide substandard medical care, and that’s under the best of circumstances,” said Rebecca Lightsey, executive director of American Gateways, which provides legal help to low-income immigrants throughout Central Texas. “To keep vulnerable people, most of whom have no criminal history, locked up in close quarters without access to treatment or testing for the virus is inhumane.”

She said she hopes the government moves soon to release at-risk detainees to family members or others who can maintain social distance until the crisis passes.

ICE officials last week said there are no detainees with confirmed cases of COVID-19; however, a medical staffer at Elizabeth Detention Center in New Jersey on Thursday tested positive for the coronavirus. The agency has temporarily suspended social visitation in all of its detention facilities, including the 31 in Texas.

ROUND ROCK U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has transferred 47 immigrant women who were part of a “sit-down” protest Monday inside a detention facility in Taylor, an ICE official said.

The women were transferred to the Laredo Detention Center, said Richard Rocha, an ICE spokesman, in an email Thursday.

The women were part of a group of 80 female detainees protesting at the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor, Rocha said.

“The detainees told facility staff they would continue their protest until they were released from custody; however, those actions compromised security protocols at the facility and blocked access to services including visitation, court and the dining area,” Rocha said.

Staff told the women who did not comply with requests to stop the protest that they might be transferred, he said.