ICE has tested a tiny fraction of its detainees for COVID-19. Most of them were positive
Note: This story is being updated as more information becomes available.
At least 60% of immigration detainees who have been tested nationwide have the virus that causes COVID-19, according to the most recent federal data available.
According to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 705 of its 30,737 detainees have been tested for the new coronavirus as of April 21. It’s unclear if more detainees have been tested since then. T
The numbers from ICE reveal that only 1.38% of its detainees have been tested. Out of those 705 tests, the agency says on its website that 425 people have tested positive, meaning that at least 60.3% of people who were tested have the virus, according to the most recent federal data available.
That number could be higher because ICE does not update its website in real time. In the past few weeks, officials have delayed by up to a week in posting the number of confirmed cases on its COVID-19 webpage.
ICE does not report on its site how many tests have been administered. The Miami Herald has been obtaining those numbers from agency officials.
“One of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) highest priorities is the health and safety of those in our custody,” ICE said in a statement on Wednesday. “Detainees are being monitored and tested for COVID-19 in line with CDC guidance, and in conjunction with the recommendations of state and local health partners.”
Last week, a federal lawsuit was filed in Miami federal court citing national health experts who said the opposite.
According to the sworn statements, health experts say U.S. immigration officials are violating federal guidelines by grouping inmates together by the hundreds if they have COVID-19 symptoms or have been exposed to the coronavirus, a measure that the agency calls “cohorting.”
ICE “directly contradicts [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] guidance in several ways, including, most critically, that ICE officials describe cohorting as the planned response to a known COVID-19 exposure, not a practice of last resort,” said Joseph Shin, an assistant professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine, a founding member of the Cornell Center for Health Equity, and past medical director for the Weill Cornell Center for Human Rights, in a sworn statement that is part of the lawsuit.
Earlier this month, ICE told a federal judge that 350 detainees — more than half of the detainees inside Krome, an immigration detention center in southwest Miami-Dade County — have been exposed to COVID-19.
But those numbers are “likely to be much greater,” experts say, due to a lack of testing and the agency’s transfer practices. A recent example includes at least 50 Guatemalans being transferred between an airport and detention centers at least 13 times within the last eight days. ICE is also not testing people who have shown serious symptoms, federal sources inside detention centers say.
“If people are coming and going, and leaving and then coming in, then the number of people that have actually been exposed is way more than 350,” Dr. Ashish Jha, director of Harvard’s Global Health Institute, told the Miami Herald.
“The idea that you have all these transfers from center to center or to airports, each one of them requires officers and a number of people that you have to interact with,” Jha added. “It’s very risky under the context of coronavirus. So by cohorting people, all you are doing is spreading it among everyone, including people that may not have it. And because we are not testing, there is no way of knowing.”
As of Wednesday, ICE reports that only four detainees in Florida have tested positive for the virus and that they are being housed at Krome, which is run by Akima Global Services, an ICE contractor. Eight staff members at Krome also tested positive, the agency said in recent court filings earlier this month.
GEO Group, the contractor that runs the Broward Transitional Center, as well as the Glades County Sheriff’s Office, which operates the Glades Detention Center, told the Herald that as of Monday there are no staff, employees or contractors at the centers who are recovering from or have tested positive for COVID-19. Akima did not respond to more than 10 emails from the Miami Herald seeking updated information.
On April 27, ICE refused to disclose if additional detainees at any of the three facilities have tested positive for COVID-19 or if the centers have any suspected cases, citing “pending litigation.”
This story was originally published April 22, 2020 at 2:48 PM.
