Kennedy Overruled His Own Medical Reviewer and Kept a Cruise Passenger Locked in Quarantine

A Safe Alternative, a Locked Door

On June 15, 2026, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. signed an order requiring Angela Perryman to stay in the National Quarantine Unit in Nebraska through June 21, 2026, Healthbeat reported.¹ Four days earlier, the physician Kennedy had appointed as medical reviewer, Michael Bell, had found that monitored quarantine at home would protect public health.² Kennedy used federal quarantine power to keep her locked up anyway.¹²

Perryman had been evacuated from the cruise ship MV Hondius after possible exposure to Andes virus, a hantavirus capable of rare person-to-person transmission.¹ Neither she nor the other 17 Americans sent to the facility had shown signs of infection when Healthbeat reported on June 16.¹

Kennedy had that power because Trump appointed him and kept him.³⁴ Trump presided over Kennedy's swearing-in on February 13, 2025, saying there was "no better person to lead our campaign of historic reforms and restore faith in American health care," and HHS still identified Kennedy as secretary on October 9, 2026.³⁴

The Defense Was Safety; the Review Found Home Quarantine Safe

The case for holding Perryman rested on the danger of a missed infection: the outbreak had killed three people, symptoms could take as long as 42 days to appear, and Florida had refused the federal government's demand for continuous surveillance and twice-daily in-person checks.⁵¹ HHS told Healthbeat that continued confinement was necessary to protect Perryman and her community because proper home monitoring was unavailable.¹

Bell agreed that CDC's concerns about easily missed early symptoms, infectiousness at symptom onset, and the illness's severity and lack of effective treatments were supported by the evidence; he nevertheless found home quarantine with the specified safeguards adequate.²

Bell's June 11 report found a reasonable basis to believe Perryman could be infected.² But he judged her chance of becoming symptomatic progressively smaller as time passed, which reduced the relative benefit of restrictive quarantine, and he cited Andes-virus expert Gregory Mertz's testimony that countries experienced with thousands of exposed people routinely used less restrictive conditions.²

Bell recommended home quarantine if Florida accepted responsibility for daily remote symptom monitoring and access to 24-hour public health assistance.² Florida had proposed once-daily telehealth, temperature checks and symptom assessments, and Bell found that plan adequate with prearranged care at a local ECMO-capable hospital.² "In my professional judgment, this less restrictive alternative is adequate to protect public health," he wrote.² Perryman agreed to complete the monitoring period at home, where she had a private bedroom and bathroom.² Bell also recorded that CDC had accepted a Westchester County order permitting another passenger's twice-daily symptom checks by video or in person at the county health department's discretion.²

Florida had offered to take responsibility for the daily monitoring, and at her June 5 hearing Perryman was working with the state to arrange the hospital care.² Bell's recommendation was not a binding release order, and whether those arrangements were finished before Kennedy signed on June 15 is not confirmed.²⁶¹ But Bell found CDC's restrictions more restrictive than necessary, and HHS's response, Healthbeat reported, did not address his medical assessment.²¹

The Cost Was Her Freedom

Life in the facility, Perryman told AP, meant confinement to a room, with occasional hour-long visits to the roof under armed guard.⁷ She wanted fresh air, to cook her own food and to spend time in more than one room, AP reported.⁷

She left on June 21, 2026, when the quarantine period expired, AP reported.⁵ Eight passengers completed 42 days at the unit, and no illness was reported among them.⁵ Seven of the eight stayed voluntarily; Perryman was required to remain.⁵ Ten other Americans had left earlier under home-monitoring agreements.⁵

The quarantine's stated goal was to reduce the likelihood of secondary transmission while exposed passengers were monitored.² In its June 24 announcement, HHS said all monitoring had ended and reported no sustained U.S. transmission, and CDC Acting Director Jay Bhattacharya said no new cases had arisen in the United States.⁸ That was a successful public health outcome, but it does not show that the locked unit was necessary for Perryman: Bell had found that the same goal could be met through monitored home quarantine.⁸²

The Quarantine Ended; the Charge Remains

Perryman left Nebraska on a flight home on June 21, 2026, and HHS announced the end of all monitoring that month.⁵⁸ Kennedy was still Trump's health secretary in HHS's announcement of October 9, 2026.⁴

This was not the only episode of its kind: on June 9, 2025, HHS removed all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, and former CDC Director Susan Monarez later testified that Kennedy demanded an advance commitment to approve every committee recommendation regardless of the scientific evidence.⁹¹⁰

Kennedy used the government's power to confine Angela Perryman after the medical reviewer he appointed found a safe, less restrictive alternative.¹² Her release came when the monitoring period expired, not when the review recommended home quarantine.⁵² Keeping a citizen locked up without answering the government's own medical case for a less restrictive quarantine is an abuse of public health power.¹² It belongs in the case against the Trump administration because the official who did it is the secretary Trump appointed and has kept in office.³⁴