Federal immigration officials are pushing back on calls to release detained children and parents even after a federal judge described migrant family jails as “on fire” due to the novel coronavirus pandemic. While the judge ruled last week that they must release detained kids by July 17, she has no jurisdiction over their parents, leading advocates to fear officials would bastardize this ruling to separate more families. In court, they made it clear they want to keep families in danger.
“In court papers, the Trump administration argued Judge Dolly Gee's findings on Friday were ‘insufficient’ to prove the allegations made by families that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement isn't doing enough to control the spread of coronavirus, even as there have been confirmed cases of COVID-19 in two of three family detention centers in Texas and Pennsylvania,” The Associated Press reports.
The reality is that these three privately run migrant family jails are so dangerous that 11 kids and parents so far have tested positive for COVID-19, and three House Democrats were potentially exposed by an ICE staffer who tested positive just days after legislators conducted oversight at the South Texas Family Residential Center. “ICE was trying to convince us there was nothing to worry about, that there was no mass contagion, and they’re following social distancing,” Rep. Sylvia Garcia told The Texas Tribune. The report said all three members have tested negative so far.
Advocates have been calling for the immediate release of all families as they also continue looking to the courts for help: a judge in a separate case launched by detained parents earlier this year seeking release amid the pandemic has “asked lawyers for both sides to explain how Gee's order applied to the case before him,” the AP continued. “The government said Wednesday that it was still working on a plan to comply with Gee's order … [Judge] Boasberg should not order detained families to be released, the U.S. said.”
The correct plan should be to quickly and safely release families to relatives or sponsors, period. Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chair Joaquin Castro, among the legislators who recently conducted oversight and was potentially exposed to the virus due to ICE’s negligence, said according to The Texas Tribune, “The conditions are bad. These people are living in a petri dish.” Meanwhile, Garcia said she believed officials distributed masks to detained people only as legislators were about to visit.
Castro and Garcia are now among the 80 House Democrats calling on ICE to immediately release families, writing in a letter that “Since the COVID-19 crisis started, members of Congress, advocates, attorneys, and doctors have continuously urged ICE to use its authority to release detained families. Instead of releasing families, ICE has used the pandemic to implement cruel and inhumane policies toward immigrants.”
“We know the administration has a history of separating thousands of children from their parents,” they continue. “Family separation should never be this country’s policy. Medical organizations have long stated that the practice creates extraordinary harm to children. Detention of children for any amount of time, even with their parents, causes physical harm and irreparable trauma. We call upon ICE to act with compassion and release families together. These families have relatives and sponsors who are immediately available to provide them with care so that they may shelter-in-place.”
Currently, 138 parents and 139 children are being detained across the three migrant family jails. Eleven cases so far have been confirmed among families jailed at GEO Group’s Karnes County Residential Center, while four workers CoreCivic’s South Texas Family Residential Center have tested positive. These families are in danger, and the right moves aren’t more half-measures from ICE, more delays and stalling, or more family separation via a barbaric “binary choice”: these families must be freed, as we’ve been saying all along.
“Everyone’s got their fingers crossed and hope that ICE is listening to the American public who doesn’t want family separation,” RAICES director of family detention services Andrea Meza told The AP. “It makes no logical sense why they’re hanging on to these people.”