ICE urged to release detainees at heightened risk for coronavirus
Several LGBTQ advocacy groups on Tuesday called for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to release all detainees in its custody and to close all of its detention centers because of coronavirus.
“People in ICE custody are vulnerable to getting
COVID-19 given the close proximity of detained people to each other,”
reads a press release the Transgender Law Center, the Black LGBTQIA+ Migrant
Project, the Black Alliance for Just Immigration and Familia: Trans Queer
Liberation Movement issued. “ICE officers, guards and other staff are also
likely to transmit the virus.”
“Worldwide, epidemiologists are advising
social distancing as a way to mitigate the spread of the novel COVID-19,”
say the groups. “Prisons, jails and detention centers cannot accommodate
this advice. Solitary confinement further impedes access to necessary medical
care. Given ICE’s history of inadequate treatment and the recent deaths of
eight immigrants in ICE custody in the last five months, it is clear that ICE
is not ready nor equipped to handle a COVID-19 outbreak in any of its
facilities.”
Immigration Equality Executive Director Aaron
Morris on Tuesday told the Washington Blade during a telephone interview that
ICE should release detainees with HIV/AIDS on parole because of the threat of
coronavirus.
“Any communicable disease that is introduced into a
detention facility spreads way faster than in the general population,”
said Morris. “People are sandwiched in there. They are over-populated.
They have no privacy and that is just a recipe for disaster.”
“This is a population for whom ICE has and corporate
facilities have regularly struggled to provide appropriate care in the best of
times,” he added, referring to ICE detainees with HIV/AIDS.
Roxsana Hernández, a transgender Honduran woman
with HIV, was in ICE custody in New Mexico when she died on May 25, 2018. Johana
“Joa” Medina Leon, a transgender Salvadoran woman who was also
living with HIV, died at a Texas hospital on June 1, 2019, three days after ICE
released her from its custody.
A group of more than two dozen trans women who were in ICE custody at the Cibola County Correctional Center, a privately-run detention center in Milan, N.M., in a letter they sent to Trans Queer Pueblo, a Phoenix-based group that advocates on behalf of undocumented LGBTQ immigrants, last summer noted detainees with HIV did not receive “adequate” medical attention. Hernández was in ICE custody at the detention center before her death.
The New Mexico Office of the Medical
Investigator concluded Hernández died
from Castleman disease associated with AIDS.
The Transgender Law Center, which represents
Hernández’s family in a wrongful death lawsuit, commissioned a
second autopsy that found the cause of death “most probably severe
complications of dehydration superimposed upon HIV infection, with the probable
presence of one or more opportunistic infections.” The second autopsy also
found “evidence of physical abuse” that included bruises around her
rib cage.
Arianna Lint, chief executive officer of Arianna’s Center, a South Florida organization that serves trans women, on Tuesday said ICE should also release trans women with HIV as a way to protect them from coronavirus.
“We are at the most risk,” Lint told the Blade
during a telephone interview.
Elisabeth Grant-Gibson is a member of the Natchez Network Immigrant
Support, a group of volunteers in the Miss Lou Region of Mississippi and
Louisiana who support ICE detainees and their families through visitation,
post-release assistance and a variety of other programs.
Grant-Gibson visited Yariel Valdés González — a Blade contributor who was in ICE custody for nearly a year — at the privately-run River Correctional Center in Ferriday, La., days before his March 4 release. Grant-Gibson on Tuesday said ICE should release people with HIV/AIDS and others who are at increased risk for coronavirus.
“It will be the guards who bring it in,” Grant-Gibson
told the Blade. “Once in, it will be a problem.”
The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Washington and the Northwest Immigrants Rights Project on Monday filed a federal lawsuit that calls for ICE to release its detainees who are at high-risk for coronavirus. The groups represent a group of immigrants who are in ICE custody at the privately-run Tacoma Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Wash.
The ACLU of Louisiana on March 12 called for ICE to release
all asylum seekers and refugees in its custody in Louisiana after officials
confirmed the first coronavirus case in the state. A press release notes
Louisiana “now holds the second highest number
of immigrant detainees in the U.S., many of whom are being held in private
prisons in remote locations and have been denied an opportunity to be granted
humanitarian parole.”
“This public health crisis also
poses a significant risk to thousands of refugees and asylum-seekers who are
being warehoused in brutal conditions across Louisiana,” said ACLU of Louisiana
Executive Director Alanah Odoms Hebert. “Seeking
asylum is a legal right, and federal and state officials have an obligation to
protect the health of people fleeing violence and persecution to seek refuge in
this country.”
U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler
(D-N.Y.) in a
letter he sent to Acting ICE Director Matthew Albence on March 13 wrote ICE
“should consider alternatives to detention for those who pose
no threat to public safety or national security, particularly those who are at
a heightened risk of developing serious illness from COVID-19, such as the
elderly and individuals with heart or lung conditions, diabetes, or compromised
immune systems.”
“ICE should also
take steps to ensure that such individuals are not detained until the spread of
the virus has sufficiently subsided,” added Nadler.
No confirmed coronavirus cases in ICE detention centers
ICE on its website
says as of Tuesday there are no confirmed coronavirus cases at any of its
detention facilities. ICE has also suspended visitation at all of its detention
facilities.
“Law enforcement agencies across the country,
to include ICE, are paying close attention to this pandemic,” an ICE
spokesperson told the Blade on Tuesday.
“The health, welfare and
safety of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainees is one of the
agency’s highest priorities,” added the spokesperson. “Since the
onset of reports of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), ICE epidemiologists
have been tracking the outbreak, regularly updating infection prevention and
control protocols, and issuing guidance to ICE Health Service Corps (IHSC)
staff for the screening and management of potential exposure among detainees.”
The spokesperson said ICE
“continues to incorporate CDC’s COVID-19 guidance, which is built upon the
already established infectious disease monitoring and management protocols
currently in use by the agency.”
“In addition, ICE is
actively working with state and local health partners to determine if any
detainee requires additional testing or monitoring to combat the spread of the
virus,” added the spokesperson.
The spokesperson did not
specifically say whether ICE has access to coronavirus tests in case a detainee
or staff member shows symptoms of the disease. The spokesperson did, however,
note ICE “does not conduct operations at medical facilities, except under
extraordinary circumstances.”
“ICE policy directs our officers to avoid making arrests at
sensitive locations — to include schools, places of worship, and health care facilities,
such as hospitals, doctors’ offices, accredited health clinics, and emergent or
urgent care facilities — without prior approval for an exemption, or in exigent
circumstances,” the spokesperson told the Blade.
Published at Wed, 18 Mar 2020 04:27:34 +0000