The Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the ACLU of Washington are suing Immigration and Customs Enforcement for the immediate release of a number of immigrant detainees who are at serious risk of health complications or death in the event of COVID-19 infection in Washington state, saying “As public health experts have repeatedly warned, waiting to react once the virus takes hold will be too late.”
The group of plaintiffs named in the lawsuit “are older adults or have medical conditions that lead to high risk of serious COVID-19 infection,” including kidney disease, diabetes, and asthma, and are jailed at a notorious privately run facility in Tacoma. While ICE has claimed no one in custody has tested positive for the virus so far, the agency also won’t say how many have been tested. ICE can parole vulnerable folks right now, but has continued to refuse to do so.
The state has been particularly hard-hit during this public health crisis, which also leaves a number of people currently jailed at the Northwest Detention Center at high risk, the lawsuit said. “In the face of this great threat, social distancing and hygiene measures are Plaintiffs’ only defense against COVID-19. Those protective measures are exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, in the environment of an immigration detention center, where Plaintiffs share toilets, sinks, and showers, eat in communal spaces, and are in close contact with the many other detainees and officers around them.”
“Because risk mitigation is the only known strategy that can protect vulnerable groups from COVID-19, public health experts with experience in immigration detention and correctional settings have recommended the release of vulnerable detainees from custody,” the lawsuit continues. “Dr. Marc Stern, a correctional health expert, has concluded that “[f]or detainees who are at high risk of serious illness or death should they contract the COVID-19 virus, release from detention is a critically important way to meaningfully mitigate that risk.” Another expert, Dr. Robert Greifinger, “has concluded that ‘even with the best-laid plans to address the spread of COVID-19 in detention facilities, the release of high risk individuals is a key part of a risk mitigation strategy.’”
The ACLU of Washington and Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, along with the Columbia Legal Services, had already called on federal immigration officials to release vulnerable detainees from Northwest, writing that detainees “are housed in close quarters and are often in poor health,” leaving them “highly vulnerable to outbreaks of contagious illnesses,” according to a letter reviewed by the Associated Press. But officials have not only refused to exercise their power and ability to do so, over at the Justice Department, officials have also refused to shut down U.S. immigration court hearings for now as a matter of public health safety, continuing to show how little they value immigrants’ lives.
“Immigrant detention centers are institutions that uniquely heighten the danger of disease transmission,” said Eunice Cho of the ACLU’s National Prison Project. “In normal circumstances, ICE has proven time and again that it is unable to protect the health and safety of detained people. These are not normal circumstances, and the heightened risk of serious harm to people in detention from COVID-19 is clear. Public health experts have warned that failing to reduce the number of people detained—and in particular, failing to release those particularly vulnerable to the disease—endangers the lives of everyone in the detention facility, including staff, and the broader community.”
