May 07, 2020

ICE detainees protest lack of protection from COVID-19

topic:	Refugees and Asylum
located:	USA
editor:	Yair Oded

Across the U.S., prisons have become breeding grounds for COVID-19, and immigrants held at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities have been particularly vulnerable to the ravages of the disease.

Jailed in crammed units under harsh conditions, hundreds of migrants have thus far contracted the virus and thousands more are at risk of getting it. Reports emerging from ICE facilities throughout the country reveal that inmates have been protesting their maltreatment and that ICE guards retaliate with brutal crackdowns and punishments against those attempting to stand up for their rights. 

It is estimated that over 30,000 immigrants are currently held at ICE detention centres across the U.S., and while the agency reportedly released some inmates that were sick or vulnerable to contracting or transmitting the coronavirus, the decision making process in this regard has been highly opaque and arbitrary.

As of now, ICE has shown no intention of releasing the vast majority of inmates, even though most of them do not pose a risk to the public, have not committed criminal offences, and are not subject to mandatory detention orders. 

According to data published by ICE, 606 detainees tested positive for coronavirus as of May 4, but it is estimated that the actual number could be significantly higher seeing as test results are not delivered in real-time. 

Conditions at ICE facilities and treatment of detainees have been abhorrent long before the advent of coronavirus, and have elicited both the wrath of human rights organisations and protests by inmates. Yet the outbreak of the current pandemic has made matters even worse. Reports indicate that the authorities at ICE facilities have not taken proper measures to protect their populations from the virus. ICE’s refusal to release inmates that do not legally need to be placed under arrest means that facilities remain crowded and that social distancing guidelines are impossible to enact. 

Immigrants detained at ICE prisons also claim that those of them who exhibit signs of COVID-19 are often not granted proper medical attention in a timely manner, and that now that inmates aren’t allowed to work in kitchens (for sanitary reasons) they often do not get enough food. 

Across the country, immigrant detainees have staged protests of various kinds in response to their neglect by ICE. A joint investigation by The Intercept and The Takeaway revealed that at an ICE detention facility in Georgia, migrants protested twice in April after some of them were denied adequate medical attention and meals became insufficient and infrequent. ICE guards retaliated by blasting protesters with pepper spray and firing away at them with pepper ball guns. 

A separate investigation by The Intercept indicated that female inmates at a different ICE facility in Georgia filmed themselves describing the over-crowded and poor sanitary conditions at their prison. After the women’s video went viral on social media and YouTube, ICE retaliated by subjecting the women to solitary confinement (a method they often employ to reprimand detainees). 

Mother Jones had conducted several interviews with female detainees held at the LaSalle ICE detention facility, all of whom shared harrowing accounts of their mistreatment, neglect and abuse by the prison authorities. “We’re here in totally inhumane conditions,” one of them said. A different interviewee stated that when some of the detained women peacefully protested their conditions, they were pepper-sprayed by the guards and began suffocating. 

In an interview for The Intercept, Adelina Nicholls, executive director of the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights, stated that “For months, community members have demanded ICE protect detained immigrants from COVID-19 and release them immediately (…) Instead, detention centres, including for-profit facilities, ramp up their use of violent, paramilitary, SWAT-like teams, such as SORT, to repress immigrants in detention centres that are speaking out about the horrendous conditions and lack of protection during this global pandemic.”

Detained immigrants are therefore victimised by both an administration that seeks to use them as tools for political gains and avaricious companies eager to cash in on their plight. Both entities have a vested interest in having immigrants remain behind bars. In times of a global pandemic, this is tantamount to a death sentence. 

Image by Customs and Border Protection

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