Another Arizona immigration detention facility has seen such a massive surge in confirmed COVID-19 cases that it accounted for nearly half of new positive results among facilities nationally, AZ Mirror’s Laura Gómez reports. “On June 11, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement reported 22 positive cases of COVID-19 at the Eloy Detention Center in Pinal County. Four days later, that number jumped 460% to 123 confirmed cases, ICE reported Monday.”
AZ Mirror reports that among the detained people in fear at the for-profit CoreCivic facility is Shakira Najera Chilel, a transgender asylum-seeker who has been held there since September and has not received the medical attention she needs. “The prospect of the COVID-19 pandemic spreading in the ICE detention center where she thinks the wellbeing of her and others is overlooked adds to her worries,” the report said.
This is the second ICE facility in Arizona to see a surge in confirmed cases in recent weeks. Nearby La Palma Correctional Center, another for-profit CoreCivic facility, has seen 81 confirmed cases as of June 15, also among the highest in the nation.
Arizona Republic reported that detainees at La Palma have begged ICE officials to release them due to medical conditions that make them particularly vulnerable amid the pandemic, including asthma and cancer. "In this place,” a number of detained people wrote in a letter obtained by Arizona Republic, “hygiene measures are not taken, we do not receive adequate medical treatment or food, and these factors make us more likely to contract the virus.”
Transgender detainees like Chilel were also vulnerable prior the pandemic, often facing “discrimination and harassment based on their sexual orientation or gender identity, as well as lack of appropriate HIV and other medical care,” House Democrats recently said in a letter to acting Homeland Security Sec. Chad Wolf. Yet ICE officials have so far ignored legislators’ calls to release LGBTQ asylum-seekers, making an intentional decision to leave vulnerable people in harm’s way.
“ICE has proven itself incapable of protecting the people in its custody, routinely ignoring CDC guidelines and ICE’s own Pandemic Response Requirements,” legislators said.
Gómez’s report said that ICE officials attributed the surge in confirmed COVID-19 cases at Eloy to increased testing at the facility, which then raises the question of how many detained people are sick but just haven’t been tested yet. In fact, the majority of people currently in ICE’s custody haven’t been tested, according to the agency’s own numbers. Not a shocker coming from the administration of an impeached president who actually said out loud: "If we stop testing right now, we’d have very few cases, if any.”
Arizona overall has been seeing a terrifying surge in confirmed COVID-19 cases in recent days. “Just over the last two days state data shows the number of Arizona COVID patients on ventilators, in the ICU, in the ER, and inpatient have been the highest they've ever been,” AZ Family reported on Monday. “And according to data from DOMO Data Solutions, Maricopa County is leading the entire country in new cases compared to seven days prior.”