There’s a pretty clear reason why Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) wants to test only a small number of detainees for COVID-19: the more people it tests, the higher the positive numbers climb. According to the most recent data available, 425 out of 705 people have tested positive, with the worst in-custody outbreaks located in Arizona, California, Louisiana, Texas, and New York facilities.
But ICE is misleading the public, because those 705 tests represent only a fraction of the nearly 31,000 people in ICE custody as of April 18. Other detainees aren’t being tested because they’re asymptomatic and likely aren’t being prioritized for tests when, according to its own guidelines, ICE transfers people to outside care only when they’re showing “moderate to severe symptoms.” In some cases, ICE has been actively blocking the release of full testing information from the public.
Last week, NJ.com reported ICE has been blocking a New Jersey jail, which has been testing all inmates, from releasing any result information regarding immigrants detained there. “We were officially notified today that ICE has prohibited us from reporting any information regarding their detainees including all of our test results,” a local official said in the report. In another instance, Texas Observer reported that while workers inside facilities in the state have also tested positive, ICE didn’t reported them because they’re third-party contractors.
The numbers are rapidly climbing and will only get worse, as Daily Kos’ Lauren Floyd wrote earlier this week: “A study released Monday found that 72% of immigrants in detention facilities are expected to be infected with COVID-19 by their 90th day in ICE detention, and that's an optimistic outcome according to the nonprofit Government Accountability Project. The percentage increases to nearly 100% in a worst-case scenario.”
There is action within the courts, where one judge recently ordered officials to immediately begin decreasing the detainee population at a California detention facility that currently jails 1,300 people—and where advocates have warned crowded conditions could quickly turn the privately operated site into a COVID-19 tinderbox. But whether that action happens quickly enough—or ICE decides to even listen to the courts at all—is another story.
What is clear is that ICE is choosing to endanger the lives of asylum-seekers and others by not releasing them to family, local organizations, or other sponsors. “Keeping immigrants in detention is exacerbating what is already a public health crisis,” Dr. Traci Green said in Floyd’s report, “which is why our interdisciplinary team of researchers recommends prompt widespread release of immigrants from these dangerous environments.”
