As jails and prisons cut inmate populations, ICE detention centers remain crowded
Over the plast few weeks, local and state governments across the United States have reduced their jail and prison populations in an effort to prevent a coronavirus outbreak behind bars.
But the same isn’t true for immigration detention centers, which remain crowded as orders to isolate and quarantine sick detainees mount by the day, federal sources say.
“One of the most critical steps you can take to immediately reduce the spread of COVID-19 is to utilize your public health and licensing authority to instruct federal immigration detention facilities, county and local jails to substantially reduce their detainee occupancy capacity,” Amnesty International told governors nationwide in a letter last week.
It continued: “Given the documented inadequacies of medical care and basic hygiene in immigration detention facilities, it is of vital importance for state public health authorities to address the state-wide risk posed by crowded immigration detention facilities.”
But the human rights organization’s plea — along with widespread calls from immigration advocacy groups and civil rights organizations — remains unanswered, as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement says it has no plans in making any changes to its detention center populations.
That’s why Amnesty International says it launched a second campaign with the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service that calls for the next best thing: supporting the detainees from afar as they navigate isolation during the global health crisis.
“Treating people that are detained as an afterthought puts everyone’s public health in danger,” said Denise Bell, researcher for refugee and migrant rights at Amnesty International USA. “This is the time to show that we are all interconnected and that we stand together, even while physically apart.”
The effort, dubbed “Hope Can’t Be Quarantined,” encourages the public to write letters, poems and inspirational messages to inmates, whom have all been barred from receiving any visitors. It also calls on people to donate so that the commissary accounts that immigrants use to contact their families can be bolstered.
““As more Americans are confined to their own homes, they increasingly relate to the isolation and fear that thousands of migrants in detention feel,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. “This campaign allows supporters to engage in creative ways to forge closer connections and offer hope to those who need it the most.”
The campaign comes on the heels of a federal lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on Monday, which cited two public health experts who have recommended releasing immigration detainees who are at risk, including the “elderly and those with underlying medical conditions.”
The ACLU asked a federal court in the state of Washington to force officials to release a group of immigrants inside a Seattle-area detention facility who have a diabetes, heart disease, lung disease, epilepsy or kidney disease to protect them from a potential spread of COVID-19.
“ICE has the responsibility to protect the safety of all who are in immigration detention,” said Matt Adams, the legal director for the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, which joined the ACLU in the lawsuit. “As a first step, it should immediately release our clients who have already been identified by the federal government as being most at risk because of this epidemic. If it waits to react to worst-case scenarios once they take hold, it will already be too late.”
A similar request was made by a federal judge on Tuesday when he ordered the immediate release of 10 immigrants in government custody in Pennsylvania. The order issued by U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III said it would be “unconscionable and possibly barbaric” to keep the detainees in crowded detention centers.
A few days before that, a 12-page decision was issued by a federal judge in Manhattan, who ordered the release of 10 sick detainees in New York.
“Consequently, federal and state prisons have already started to engage in the early release of many individuals,” said Jessica Schneider, director of the detention program at Americans for Immigrant Justice, a South Florida organization also calling on the closures of detention facilities. “ICE, too, has the authority and discretion to engage in the mass release of immigrants who are being held on merely a civil violation. AI Justice calls on ICE to release immigrants in its custody before lives are needlessly lost.”
As of late March 2020, approximately 38,000 immigrants were being held in detention centers across the country. About 2,000 of them are in Florida.
Though immigration authorities suspended all social visitation in an effort to curb the spread of COVID-19, federal sources say that several sections of South Florida detention facilities in Miami-Dade, Broward, Monroe and Glades counties have had to be quarantined after detainees developed flu-like symptoms and in some instances were sent to the hospital.
Magdalena Cuprys, a South Florida attorney who represents two detainees with underlying health conditions at the Krome and Glades detention centers, told the Miami Herald that ICE denied her requests to have her sick clients released.
“My clients tell me that there are several areas of both detention centers under quarantine because someone may have coronavirus,” Cuprys said. One of her clients has prostate cancer, while the other suffers from severe asthma. “However, ICE won’t release them because they have their own medical staff on site.”
While ICE has told the Miami Herald that there are no confirmed cases of coronavirus inside Florida detention centers as of Wednesday, detainees and family members of those inside say conditions are worsening by the day, with hundreds of inmates still in quarantine.
The ICE public affairs office said the agency in general has conducted COVID-19 tests but wouldn’t say how many and if there are still any pending results.
“That isn’t something we have to provide,” said ICE spokeswoman Tamara Spicer, in an email. “We don’t have data on the number of tests, but we’re testing detainees and employees as appropriate per the CDC guidelines. And all persons arriving at an ICE facility are being screened.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention testing guidelines cited by ICE, people who qualify for COVID-19 examinations are those who are already hospitalized, people 65 and older and people with underlying health conditions who have symptoms.
But immigrant detainees held at the Monroe County jail told the Herald on Tuesday that it’s not just those who have major health conditions that are at risk of contracting the virus. About two dozen inmates told the a reporter that Thursday will be the detainees’ third day participating in a hunger strike.
“We hope they hear us and we hope they release us,” they said. “Our lives matter, too.”
This story was originally published April 1, 2020 at 7:06 PM.
