The new analysis from The New York Times on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) handling of the novel coronavirus pandemic confirms what immigrant rights advocates and medical experts have been trying to tell anyone who would listen for over a year now: ICE had the power to prevent a health disaster within its facilities, and largely chose not to. Instead, the agency worsened it.
“Our analysis compared estimated infection rates in ICE detention centers with infection rates in prisons and in the general population,” the report said. “As Covid-19 cases rose last June, ICE detention facilities had an average infection rate five times that of prisons and 20 times that of the general population.”
“There are a number of reasons Covid-19 hit ICE detention sites particularly hard, including spotty implementation of the agency’s own pandemic guidelines in its facilities,” The Times said in a number of takeaways. The analysis points to an incident described in a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of Inspector General report last month, which found that when immigrants detained at Arizona’s La Palma Correctional Center held a peaceful protest over the lack of sufficient personal protective equipment, they were violently sprayed by guards with chemical agents.
”A letter signed by 182 LPCC detainees indicates the facility used pepper spray, pepper balls, and chemical agents, and punished protesting detainees with lengthy stays in segregation. We confirmed LPCC used chemical agents to end the protests,” the report said.
Advocacy group Detention Watch Network said in a blockbuster report last December that “counties and multicounty economic areas with ICE facilities were more likely to confront serious COVID-19 outbreaks.” That report estimated that ICE’s failure to release more people amid the pandemic in fact added nearly 250,000 cases to U.S. numbers. In its analysis, The Times said “nfections inside detention centers have ripple effects in surrounding communities.”
“Take Frio County, Texas, for example,” the analysis said. “This rural county of around 20,000 people is home to two large ICE facilities run by private prison companies. On May 5, 2020, there were 10 known cases in the county, all of them linked to the South Texas ICE Processing Center. Three days later, the number of positive cases had tripled countywide.”
The analysis also cites the secretive agency’s actions misleading the public on pandemic numbers within its facilities. Back in July, private prison executives told Congress that 900 of their employees had tested positive for the virus. But because of ICE’s policy excluding third party workers from its public caseload database, the agency made it appear as if there were only a few dozen non-detainee cases within immigration facilities at the time.
“At a House hearing on oversight of ICE detention facilities in July 2020, Representative Kathleen Rice of New York asked the chief executives of four ICE private contractors to release data on employee infections,” the analysis continued. “All four said they would release the information with authorization from ICE, but to date there is still no systemwide data on infections among ICE contractors.”
ICE has always had the power to just allow detained immigrants to shelter at home, a fact advocates have repeated over and over again since the beginning of the pandemic. “Immigration detention is civil detention, meaning that people in custody are not there to serve time for committing a crime, but to wait for an immigration court to decide whether they can stay in the United States,” The Times said in a fourth takeaway. ICE reduced the detainee population from a record of nearly 55,000 set by the previous administration, but 14,000 people still remain detained during the pandemic.
The analysis notes that while the Federal Bureau of Prisons has a systemwide vaccination plan for its detainees, ICE does not. Even when advocates have attempted to book outside appointments for detained immigrants, ICE has refused to drive them, even though it does so for certain other medical appointments. Mother Jones reported last month that in litigation around a New York facility, the judge slammed officials as “doing nothing to get them the vaccine. Nothing. Zero.”
The agency has outrageously flouted court orders stemming from lawsuits seeking to release particularly vulnerable detained immigrants. “In April 2020, a federal judge in California ordered ICE to ‘identify and consider releasing detainees who are at higher risk of complications from Covid-19,’ regardless of legal status,” the analysis continued. “Nearly a year later, the same judge found that the agency had ‘failed to substantially comply with the court’s orders.’” No surprise as the agency has found ways to ignore court orders calling for the release of children detained with parents.
“This report demonstrates what advocates and public health experts have been warning about ever since the pandemic began: ICE and its contractors are fundamentally dangerous to the lives of detained immigrants and surrounding communities,” Cville Immigrant Freedom Fund tweeted in response to the analysis.
“Our analysis compared estimated infection rates in ICE detention centers with infection rates in prisons and in the general population,” the report said. “As Covid-19 cases rose last June, ICE detention facilities had an average infection rate five times that of prisons and 20 times that of the general population.”
“There are a number of reasons Covid-19 hit ICE detention sites particularly hard, including spotty implementation of the agency’s own pandemic guidelines in its facilities,” The Times said in a number of takeaways. The analysis points to an incident described in a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of Inspector General report last month, which found that when immigrants detained at Arizona’s La Palma Correctional Center held a peaceful protest over the lack of sufficient personal protective equipment, they were violently sprayed by guards with chemical agents.
”A letter signed by 182 LPCC detainees indicates the facility used pepper spray, pepper balls, and chemical agents, and punished protesting detainees with lengthy stays in segregation. We confirmed LPCC used chemical agents to end the protests,” the report said.
Advocacy group Detention Watch Network said in a blockbuster report last December that “counties and multicounty economic areas with ICE facilities were more likely to confront serious COVID-19 outbreaks.” That report estimated that ICE’s failure to release more people amid the pandemic in fact added nearly 250,000 cases to U.S. numbers. In its analysis, The Times said “nfections inside detention centers have ripple effects in surrounding communities.”
“Take Frio County, Texas, for example,” the analysis said. “This rural county of around 20,000 people is home to two large ICE facilities run by private prison companies. On May 5, 2020, there were 10 known cases in the county, all of them linked to the South Texas ICE Processing Center. Three days later, the number of positive cases had tripled countywide.”
The analysis also cites the secretive agency’s actions misleading the public on pandemic numbers within its facilities. Back in July, private prison executives told Congress that 900 of their employees had tested positive for the virus. But because of ICE’s policy excluding third party workers from its public caseload database, the agency made it appear as if there were only a few dozen non-detainee cases within immigration facilities at the time.
“At a House hearing on oversight of ICE detention facilities in July 2020, Representative Kathleen Rice of New York asked the chief executives of four ICE private contractors to release data on employee infections,” the analysis continued. “All four said they would release the information with authorization from ICE, but to date there is still no systemwide data on infections among ICE contractors.”
ICE has always had the power to just allow detained immigrants to shelter at home, a fact advocates have repeated over and over again since the beginning of the pandemic. “Immigration detention is civil detention, meaning that people in custody are not there to serve time for committing a crime, but to wait for an immigration court to decide whether they can stay in the United States,” The Times said in a fourth takeaway. ICE reduced the detainee population from a record of nearly 55,000 set by the previous administration, but 14,000 people still remain detained during the pandemic.
The analysis notes that while the Federal Bureau of Prisons has a systemwide vaccination plan for its detainees, ICE does not. Even when advocates have attempted to book outside appointments for detained immigrants, ICE has refused to drive them, even though it does so for certain other medical appointments. Mother Jones reported last month that in litigation around a New York facility, the judge slammed officials as “doing nothing to get them the vaccine. Nothing. Zero.”
The agency has outrageously flouted court orders stemming from lawsuits seeking to release particularly vulnerable detained immigrants. “In April 2020, a federal judge in California ordered ICE to ‘identify and consider releasing detainees who are at higher risk of complications from Covid-19,’ regardless of legal status,” the analysis continued. “Nearly a year later, the same judge found that the agency had ‘failed to substantially comply with the court’s orders.’” No surprise as the agency has found ways to ignore court orders calling for the release of children detained with parents.
“This report demonstrates what advocates and public health experts have been warning about ever since the pandemic began: ICE and its contractors are fundamentally dangerous to the lives of detained immigrants and surrounding communities,” Cville Immigrant Freedom Fund tweeted in response to the analysis.