On April 11, Behzad Jalili and 71 other immigrant detainees were removed from two jails in New York and Pennsylvania, ushered onto a government plane, and flown to a third jail in Texas.

The idea, it appears, was to protect these immigrants, and other detainees, from the spread of the coronavirus by reducing jail populations in the Northeast to create more “distancing.” But in the time since their journey, nearly two dozen of the detainees who were moved have tested positive for COVID-19, BuzzFeed News has learned — and Jalili fears the flight, and a subsequent bus ride, put him and the others at risk.

“When I see people here, I see fear in their eyes,” he said of immigrants who were moved to the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas. “We don’t know why we were sent here. We are not camels or sheep. We are human. We don’t want to die. We don’t want to be forgotten.”