Leading Democrats on the House Oversight and Reform Committee are demanding that Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection share their plans for a potential coronavirus outbreak in federal immigration detention facilities, writing, “DHS detention facilities may be especially vulnerable to the spread of coronavirus because of the administration’s excessive use of detention.”
The Trump administration has in fact ballooned the population in ICE detention to record numbers, and has done so in defiance of congressional limits. Oversight and Reform Committee Chair Carolyn Maloney and Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Chair Jamie Raskin say that this could now contribute to a health crisis in these already poor facilities: “Overcrowding creates dangerous conditions that increase the likelihood that disease will spread and make it more difficult to effectively quarantine contagious detainees,” they write.
The legislators note that conditions at immigration detention facilities have already put detainees, along with their immigration cases, at risk. “During a prior quarantine for a mumps outbreak at an ICE facility, hundreds of detainees reportedly were placed on lockdown and deprived of access to their lawyers even though their immigration court cases were not stayed,” the letter says. “At least one quarantined detainee was ordered deported after facing an immigration judge without access to counsel.”
The legislators note that they’d previously asked officials for documents on their handling of flu outbreaks in CBP facilities, “but the department has not complied.” They note, “Your continued failure to respond to that letter raises further concerns about the department’s ability to address new public health issues in its facilities.” Immigrant and civil rights advocates have made it clear with increasing frequency over the past few days just how dangerous this inaction and negligence could be.
“People are being taken out of their homes, away from their families, and locked up in immigration jail without access to basics like soap, hand sanitizer, or even information about COVID-19,” tweeted advocacy group Brooklyn Defenders. “Our attorneys and people we represent have reported that local ICE detention facilities have no soap or no hand sanitizer. At one jail, people have to use personal commissary money to buy soap. Visitors to the jails also have no soap in the visitors’ bathrooms, so people can and will carry germs inside the immigration jail with them.”
Law360 reported that while ICE has claimed that it “has incorporated the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidance on combating the virus,” advocates and attorneys are nevertheless “worried that established protocols and detention standards may not be enough, pointing to past incidents in which they said ICE failed to manage other public health crises.” Advocates have now urged officials to use their discretion and release detainees who may be particularly vulnerable, such as people over 60 and pregnant people.
But there are tens of thousands of people in federal immigration detention every single day who will also remain at risk, and there has to be a plan in place, the legislators say, demanding to know whether DHS is testing detainees; how many have been tested, if so; how DHS will house those who test positive or are presumed positive; and what medical care will be given to the sick, among other questions. “Chairs Maloney and Raskin requested DHS provide information and documents related to this request by March 18, 2020,” their offices said.