Firsthand Experiences Inside ICE Facilities During the Pandemic Underscore Why Immigration Detention Should be Abolished

This weblog is the second in a three-part collection inspecting President Biden’s first 100 days in workplace from the Immigration Justice Marketing campaign.

Many people will all the time vividly keep in mind the worry and lack of management that took maintain as COVID-19 unfold via our communities. Whereas many individuals and communities took precautions in opposition to the virus, people detained in dire circumstances in immigration detention services throughout the nation had been denied the flexibility to take action.

A few of these trapped in extended detention amid the COVID-19 outbreak have shared their tales. Their testimonies spotlight the shortage of humanity with which they had been handled in detention. In addition they present the methods U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) uncovered them to excessive hazard when they need to have been launched in the beginning of the pandemic to go stay and quarantine with household or sponsors exterior of detention.

From detention, as COVID-19 raged via the Joe Corley Detention Facility in Texas the place he was being held, Roger wrote:

“At present, inside this crowded detention facility, all of us are victims of this pandemic… We solely ask to combat for our lives with our households at our sides, as we’re by no means a threat to this society. It might be higher that the federal government use these facilities, meals, sources and workers to assist the individuals who want it most.

“Circumstances on this middle are ripe for the propagation of the novel coronavirus. Detainees with respiratory signs are pressured to go with out medical help, and there are over 30 folks in most dorms, making social distancing nearly unimaginable. We do not need entry to private protecting gear like masks or gloves. When the physician walks by, folks bang on the door to attempt to get medical consideration. I’ve seen folks carried out in crucial situation. In the meantime, people from the border and different detention facilities are being transferred to the power.”

One shopper detained within the Mesa Verde ICE Detention Heart in southern California mentioned,

“There’s no hand sanitizer, not even to purchase within the commissary. I attempt to clear to keep away from the virus, however I’m afraid it doesn’t work… Irrespective of how cautious I’m, I nonetheless have to the touch shared surfaces and move very shut by to others all day lengthy. I’m 51 and my well being hasn’t been the identical since my most cancers. I misplaced roughly 20 kilos throughout my first few months in ICE detention.”

One other particular person detained on the Eloy Detention Heart in Arizona shared, “I’ve heard that individuals right here have coronavirus. This final week they crammed the pods with folks and as soon as once more we can not keep a distance. There’s now 50 folks within the pod.”

Following her launch from the Irwin County Detention Heart in Georgia, one shopper wrote:

“There isn’t a hygiene, I used to be with 23 girls in a barrack and all of us shared three telephones, two showers, and three loos. We had been all touching all the identical issues and had nothing to scrub them with. The loos had been particularly soiled, there have been mosquitoes and bugs in every single place and no cleansing provides so that you simply needed to put up with it.”

These circumstances aren’t distinctive to the interval when COVID-19 was spreading quickly via detention services. Many of those detention facilities have long-documented tendencies of inhumane circumstances in addition to medical and psychological well being abuse and neglect.

There are protected methods for people to be transferred out of ICE custody to quarantine within the properties of members of the family and sponsors and have entry to the care they should recuperate. This might assist scale back the potential unfold of COVID-19 and associated impression on native healthcare infrastructure.

Because the Biden administration’s first 100 days in workplace approaches, the Division of Homeland Safety (DHS) ought to launch those that are needlessly going through dire—and at occasions lethal—conditions in ICE custody. Nobody must be locked up for of looking for security in the USA. The company should spend money on humane, community-based immigration providers to interchange detention.

FILED UNDER: asylum seekers, Biden-Harris Administration, covid-19, Immigration and Customs Enforcement