Stop deporting coronavirus-exposed immigrants

President Trump late Friday signed an order penalizing any country refusing to accept deportations from our immigration detention facilities, which officials have called breeding grounds for infectious disease. Instead of releasing, with screening and quarantine, all those who pose no public-safety risk, he is deporting people to Latin America as if the coronavirus didn’t exist.

On April 7, the administration deported 61 people to Haiti — none a criminal alien — without appropriate screening, although asymptomatic people easily spread the highly infectious disease, for which no treatment exists.

Coronavirus has been found in many of our immigration facilities, among detainees and officers. Recently, three deportees to Guatemala were hospitalized with coronavirus soon after arrival. But it’s business as usual for this president.

One infected person can cause the virus to spread like wildfire. Yet, deportation flights to Haiti and elsewhere are scheduled.

Hundreds of thousands in the hemisphere’s poorest countries could get COVID-19 as a result and many may die. Health professionals and others have urged a halt to deportations for obvious public health reasons, to no avail.

Shouldn’t recklessly spreading coronavirus be a crime with serious penalties attached?

But that’s what the administration is doing in our name. Shame is too kind a word for it; we must stop the flights. How many Haitians and Latin Americans must die? And how many detention employees must be infected with the virus while policing these policies and endangering us all?

This story was originally published April 14, 2020 at 3:04 PM with the headline "Stop deporting coronavirus-exposed immigrants."