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Tasfia Ahmad explores the steps, or lack of, that detention centers in the USA are taking to protect inmates. While American forces believe they are protecting their country by deporting migrants, South American countries feel that their citizens have been put at risk. The confined and unsanitary conditions in many facilities mean that the virus is likely to spread rapidly.
Between the middle of March and now, the majority of people around the world have been in a state of solitude. People have not been able to go outside or see loved ones, often finding difficulty in obtaining necessities to survive. With the pandemic extending lockdown and upholding stricter regulations, people miss their freedom to do whatever they want whenever, wherever they want. However, many people will not be experiencing that feeling, and may not even understand it. Some people are staying in immigration detention centers during this pandemic.
Immigration detention centers are types of facilities to keep immigrants in for possible crimes they have committed - usually alleged visa violations, or illegal entry into a country. They are typically run by government agencies that are in charge of immigration or border control, such as the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Immigration detention centers can also run by private prison corporations, including family centers, consisting of mothers and children. Many migrants come from areas filled with violence, social or economic troubles. People have to wait in these detention centres, in order to determine their immigration status or date of deportation. Before the pandemic, conditions in such facilities were often far from hygienic. ICE say in their homepage, that the detention centers are “safe, secure and humane environments and under appropriate conditions of confinement”, but that, however, is the opposite of the truth. A report was issued on July 2, 2019, describing such places as “dangerously overcrowded” and unsanitary. Facilities often do not provide soap, diapers, toothpaste, and proper hygiene products for migrants. A pediatrician treating migrant children told CNN that, when she visited the detention camps, she witnessed “extremely cold temperatures” with “lights on 24 hours a day”. There have been outbreaks of influenza, scabies, chickenpox, and lice in the camps.
Treatment from border patrol officers is often inadequate. For instance, a 16-year-old Guatemalan migrant died in May of 2019 while in custody at a Border Patrol station in Weslaco, Texas. A member of a Border Patrol Facebook group chat posted a GIF of Elmo with the quote, “Oh well.” Another responded with an image and the caption “If he dies, he dies.” Food, beds, clothes, and necessities to survive are short. The migrants simply are not receiving the proper care they require. With the coronavirus spreading like wildfire around the world, it seems things cannot get better for them: only worse.
According to the ICE Homepage, employees are putting efforts in “keeping everyone safe, and helping detect and slow the spread of the virus”, as the organization had started taking precautions around February 2020. Yet, again, ICE reported on April 24, 2020, that 317 detainees and 124 ICE employees had tested positive for COVID-19. And as of May 13, 2020, a total of 943 detainees and 225 corrections workers across 20 states have tested positive for coronavirus. According to Brown University, University of British Columbia, and George Mason University, with the new model they conducted, the numbers will continue to grow rapidly. The best scenario, based on the study, is that 72 percent of individuals at the ICE detention facilities will be infected within 90 days. And the worst scenario within 90 days, almost all individuals will be infected. The government has taken some action to prevent the coronavirus from spreading in the United States. Some are deporting thousands of people back to their home country, even those who are gravely infected. President Trump used his authority around March to seal the southwestern border. He said this course of action was necessary to prevent migrants from carrying the virus into the States.
However, people who may have the disease have been made to cross the border back into Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and other South American countries. These governments have now accused the United States, which has the most cases of coronavirus in the world, of sending infected people across the borders. Guatemala have been especially scathing, as dozens of Guatemalans who were sent home by ICE in late March have reportedly tested positive for the coronavirus after returning. Chad Wolf, the acting secretary of homeland security, said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had issued an order to turn away any people who crossed the southwestern border illegally instead of taking them to a detention center. Overall, the government is trying to move as many people out of the detention centers to stop the number of cases. However, there have not been any reports of the administration improving living conditions for those already in these facilities. Life has not been the easiest and they will have to wait, like everyone else in lockdown, for things to return to “normal”. Although, for those detained, it is much more difficult to know what "normality" will look like.
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