THE Covid-19 rule-breaking college teen Skyler Mack is "pretty hysterical" in a Cayman Islands jail with her boyfriend, her family says.

Relatives of the 18-year-old pre-med student from Georgia, who has been jailed since December 15 for flouting the Caribbean territory's strict coronavirus guidelines, have pleaded for her release.

Her grandma Jeanne Mack has written a letter to Donald Trump asking him to intervene and told Today that her granddaughter was "pretty hysterical right now"

Mack got four months behind bars last week along with her boyfriend Vanjae Ramgeet, 24, a Cayman Islands resident, for ignoring the 14-day Covid-19 quarantine period while on vacation there.

Jeanne said: "She cries, she wants to come home. She knows she made a mistake. She owns up to that, but she's pretty hysterical right now.

"It's not like her to make this kind of a mistake. She knows she screwed up. She knows she should have to pay for it."

The American Mercer University student and Ramgeet are the first people to be jailed for flouting the rules on the British territory, which is home to some 64,000 people.

Mack was due to fly back to the USA on Tuesday.

The couple's attorney Jonathon Hughes said Mack traveled here to visit her boyfriend on November 27 after testing negative for Covid before leaving the United States and testing negative again upon arrival.

"This particular sentence would have a particularly harsh effect on her, and the court ought to have considered the individual before it, not just the crime," Hughes said.

The isolation period there is monitored by an electronic device.

Two days into her 14-day quarantine, Mack left her electronic monitoring device at home when she went to a jet ski event Ramgeet was competing in.

They were jailed after a prosecutor argued that 40 hours of community service and a $2,600 fine was too soft a sentence.

The  Cayman Compass reported that the day before the couple broke the rules and went jet skiing, the punishment for violating isolation increased to two years in jail and/or a fine of up to $10,000.

"We're not asking for her to get an exception," Mack's grandmother said. "We're asking for her not to be the exception."

Judge Roger Chapple described their behavior as indicative of "selfishness and arrogance" after Mack spent seven hours at the jet ski event maskless and not social distancing, police told the paper.

Hughes will argue for a lesser sentence at the territory's court of appeal on Tuesday, December 21.

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