If the impeached president and his administration officials are going in front of cameras to lie about and downplay the COVID-19 crisis to the public, just imagine the potential risks facing the tens of thousands of people, including vulnerable children, whom officials have locked up in federal immigration detention facilities all across the U.S.
The risks facing people in unsanitary and unsafe immigration detention facilities are well-known and documented, yet there’s no indication that immigration agencies such as Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement have taken concrete action to protect children and families under their watch. Instead, their media pages are littered with releases touting drug raids and immigration arrests.
Conditions previously reported in detention facilities make it clear that a COVID-19 outbreak there could be disastrous, given that ICE has jailed a record number of people. In a report last year, the Office of the Homeland Security inspector general noted witnessing dire, filthy conditions at a number of border facilities, including adults who hadn’t been able to shower for a month. “Instead, wet wipes were handed out to maintain hygiene,” BuzzFeed News reported. Desperate detainees in overcrowded, cold cells clogged toilets with Mylar blankets—their only source of warmth—in order to be let out.
Further danger can wait people who become sick while in federal immigration custody and are in need of urgent medical care and treatment. A whistleblower last year detailed medical care at a number of ICE facilities so substandard that it contributed to numerous in-custody deaths. “The whistleblower reported that three people had died in ICE lockup after receiving inadequate medical treatment or oversight, and said official reports on a fourth person’s death were ‘very misleading,’” BuzzFeed News reported. “One man died from meningitis following ‘grossly negligent’ care. Another killed himself after saying he would do exactly that months earlier.”
Officials themselves have added to the dangers of locking up children in particular. Yazmin Juárez, the mom of a toddler who died after being detained at a migrant family jail, described seeing other sick kids there but “no effort” by ICE “to separate the sick from the healthy.” Even following the unprecedented flu deaths of detained kids, border officials rejected a CDC recommendation to administer flu shots to people under their watch. Humanitarian group Doctors for Camp Closure had offered to vaccinate some detained people for free, which officials also rejected. This is intentional criminal negligence.
Adding to this is the fact that even though the CDC has recommended thorough hand-washing with soap and water as key to remaining protected against COVID-19, the Trump administration has argued in court that it shouldn’t have to provide detained kids with soap, among other items essential to basic personal hygiene. Thankfully, an appeals court unanimously ruled against the administration, saying, “Assuring that children eat enough edible food, drink clean water, are housed in hygienic facilities with sanitary bathrooms, have soap and toothpaste, and are not sleep deprived are without doubt essential to the children’s safety.”
However, it’s unclear what steps the administration has actually taken. It took more than a year after kids began to die in custody for officials to release a medical screening plan that was then criticized by medical professionals as “bare bones.” Regarding COVID-19, The American Independent reports that while border officials claim they’re implementing "existing procedures" to protect people, “The spokesperson did not share any additional measures had been put in place at detention centers regarding the COVID-19 outbreak. CBP did not respond to questions about whether any detainees or Border Patrol staff at its various detention centers had been tested for COVID-19, or if any had tested positive.”
Immigrant and human rights advocates aren’t worried only for people in detention facilities. The inhumane and illegal Remain in Mexico policy has resulted in more than 2,000 asylum-seekers and their families being forced to wait for their U.S. immigration court cases to be heard in a squalid Mexican camp with no running water, according to legislators who have visited the camp. Back in the U.S., advocates fear for children and families who are dropping health coverage due to fears of Stephen Miller’s public charge rule making it hard for working immigrants to gain permanent status.
The Trump administration will surely remember immigrants … when it’s time to cast blame, of course. It’s an election year, which means the impeached president is yet again returning to xenophobia as his strategy, sending troops to the southern border “due to increasing coronavirus concerns,” BuzzFeed News reported last week, even though as of this week, there have been more confirmed COVID-19 cases in Canada than in Mexico.
Twenty-two Americans so far have died from COVID-19, as more than 550 U.S. cases have been confirmed, yet the impeached president has gone on television to call the World Health Organization’s global COVID-19 death rate “a false number.” He’s made it clear from the beginning that he doesn’t give a shit about Americans unless they voted for him, and even if they did, that’s debatable. Now we risk a potential pandemic reaching people whose humanity Trump doesn’t acknowledge at all.