Federal immigration officials have confirmed that a New Jersey detention facility staffer who had gone into self-quarantine earlier this week has tested positive for coronavirus, “the first case confirmed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement of an employee contracting the virus,” The Marshall Project’s Emily Kassie reports. “The agency said no detainees in ICE custody currently have confirmed cases of COVID-19,” she said.
Kassie had earlier confirmed that the staffer at the privately-run Elizabeth Detention Center had been tested for the coronavirus, but said that officials refused to say whether the employee was a medical worker. That appears to be the case: ICE spokesperson Emilio Dabul “said the staff member had limited contact with detainees, but did work in the facility’s medical ward, where immigrant detainees are treated,” Kassie reported. ICE said at least one other staffer has also tested positive, but gave no details about where, “other than say the employee did not work in New York or New Jersey,” Kassie continued. How reassuring.
ICE has every power to release detainees, but officials have so far ignored calls from legislators, medical professionals, and advocates to at the very least release those who are most at risk, including people over 60, pregnant people, and people living with HIV. Several groups have also sued the agency in an attempt to release some vulnerable detainees from a facility in hard-hit Washington state, saying “As public health experts have repeatedly warned, waiting to react once the virus takes hold will be too late.”
While ICE has continued to claim that no detainees are currently confirmed to be suffering from COVID-19, ProPublica reported that “At a suburban Denver ICE facility, the Aurora Detention Center, 10 detainees have now been quarantined for potential exposure to the coronavirus.” But Colorado Independent reports ICE spokesperson Alethea Smock “would not say whether the immigrants or anyone else in the detention facility has been tested for COVID-19.”
In a recent letter to the agency, the House Oversight and Reform Committee demanded officials turn over their plans for a potential coronavirus outbreak in detention facilities, as well as information on how many detainees have been tested (if at all), writing, “Overcrowding creates dangerous conditions that increase the likelihood that disease will spread and make it more difficult to effectively quarantine contagious detainees.”
In that letter, Oversight and Reform Committee Chair Carolyn Maloney and Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Chair Jamie Raskin noted 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 said. “At least one quarantined detainee was ordered deported after facing an immigration judge without access to counsel.”
But it’s not just adults who are in danger. BuzzFeed News reports that a staff member from a New York facility contracted to hold children who came to the U.S. alone has also tested positive for coronavirus. The Office of Refugee Resettlement “has stopped all intakes at the facility, and is notifying any staff that may have been exposed,” the agency’s spokesperson Mark Weber told BuzzFeed News. According to the report, “Two unaccompanied children have tested negative for COVID-19, while two others who have been tested are still awaiting results.”