As the number of COVID-19 cases continues to climb in the U.S. and beyond, the outbreak’s potential impact on our immigration system has become increasingly clear.

But the federal government doesn’t appear to be taking enough precautions to prevent the spread of the pandemic in its immigration detention facilities, shelters and courtrooms. As my colleague Aura Bogado pointed out on Twitter this week: “Every nook and cranny of the U.S. immigration system seems wholly unprepared yet destined for contagion.”

She listed a few examples: Thousands of asylum seekers are living in Mexican border camps with little access to running water and medical support. Newly arrived migrants are held in freezing holding cells, known as “hieleras,” for days. And some children in U.S. custody, she added, already have developed flu-like symptoms. Bogado also learned this week that several shelters already have run out of hand sanitizer and that some staffers were bringing in their own soap after facility bathrooms ran out. 

“As the death toll mounts,” Bogado wrote, “remember detained (immigrants and migrants) as people, too.”

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s network of detention centers, prisons and county jails is incredibly vulnerable to contagion, The Washington Post reported this week. 

“Immigration and Customs Enforcement detains nearly 38,000 people in more than 130 private and state-run jails and prisons across the country, many of which sit in rural areas and operate with minimal public oversight,” The Post reports. Last spring, thousands were quarantined for illnesses such as mumps, measles and flu, the paper says.

As of March 3, four detainees have been tested for COVID-19, but none tested positive. Epidemiologists working for ICE are issuing guidance to the agency’s medical staff on how to manage a potential exposure among detainees, a spokesperson said.

As governmental agencies and companies sent workers home and canceled large-scale events, the immigration court system remains open. On Thursday, more than 100 lawyers and immigrant advocacy groups from New York published an open letter to the director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees the court system. They called on the agency to develop policies to protect people in courtrooms.

“Forcing individuals who may exhibit symptoms to appear in over-crowded courtrooms,” the letter reads, “puts the health and safety of not only respondents, their witnesses, and household members at risk, but also the legal representatives for all parties as well as your own agency’s staff.”

Attorney Christina Brown experienced this firsthand. Despite exhibiting flu-like symptoms, she was expected to appear before a Texas immigration court this week. She had to file a motion that explained her condition and the current worldwide pandemic. Her hearing ultimately was continued.

Earlier this week, the National Association of Immigration Judges encouraged judges to hang Centers for Disease Control and Prevention posters that listed COVD-19 symptoms within their courtrooms. But within a few hours, the Executive Office for Immigration Review ordered the removal of all CDC posters. When reporters started asking questions, the office quickly backtracked its decision. “The matter is being rectified,” a spokesperson told them.

We’ll continue monitoring and reporting on any new coronavirus effects on the immigration system. If you have any tips, email us at [email protected].
 

DEVELOPMENTS WE'RE WATCHING

The ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy remains for now, the Supreme Court rules. Thousands of asylum seekers will continue to wait for their day in immigration court on the Mexican side of the border as the Trump administration prepares its appeal to the nation’s highest court.

In February, a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel found that the policy “violated U.S. duties under international treaties because it sent asylum seekers back to areas where they would be subject to torture and persecution.” But just hours after its decision, the 9th Circuit put its own ruling on hold so that the government could file an appeal.

From the start of the Remain in Mexico policy through Feb. 28, the number of crimes committed against migrants in Mexico exceeded 1,000, according to the nonprofit Human Rights First. 

The Trump administration is finalizing plans to send asylum seekers to El Salvador. During a secret meeting in Miami last week, U.S. officials and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele agreed to a deal that would send asylum seekers, including those from Mexico, to the Central American country. It’s the latest sign that the Trump administration is abolishing the U.S. asylum system. 

Officials also are meeting with leaders from Honduras and Guatemala, which already have begun receiving asylum seekers from the U.S., about expanding the agreements in the event that the U.S. Supreme Court blocks the Remain in Mexico policy. “We are ending abuse of our asylum system and deterring illegal immigration,” a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said. 

3 THINGS WE’RE READING

1. Medical volunteers are taking steps to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus at migrant camps where asylum seekers live without running water. (HuffPost)

U.S. officials are advising Americans to wash their hands and stay indoors. But at migrant camps along the Mexican border, where asylum seekers wait for months for their U.S. court dates, conditions are ripe for contagion, experts say. “The potential for a devastating outbreak in those circumstances is really great,” said Dr. Ranit Mishori, a senior medical adviser at Physicians for Human Rights. Without the government’s help, volunteers are building makeshift sinks and moving people with preexisting medical conditions to less crowded areas inside the encampments.

The kicker: But as more doctors and nurses cancel their trips across the border to aid the asylum-seekers, immigrants are being cut off from their only access to health care. Dr. Hannah Janeway, who helps run the Refugee Health Alliance, said so many volunteers have canceled trips to Tijuana that there are three weeks between March and April when the Refugee Health Alliance won’t have enough U.S. doctors and nurses to staff the medical clinic. On Tuesday, Perry said seven volunteers had canceled – the equivalent of a full medical team that cycles through the camp on a weekly basis.

2. A Cuban man in ICE custody died at a Louisiana prison. Video surveillance raises concerns about his care while in solitary confinement. (Associated Press)

Roylan Hernandez Diaz spent six days in a solitary cell before he died by suicide. An Associated Press investigation found that prison staff didn’t check on Hernandez every 30 minutes as required by ICE policies, “at a time when detention of migrants has reached record levels and new questions have arisen about the U.S. government’s treatment of people seeking refuge.”

The kicker: Yarelis Gutierrez Barrios was Hernandez’s partner. She had been with him for three years as they voyaged through South and Central America, always looking for a way to reach the United States. The man she knew was resilient, she says, determined to win his asylum case, not the kind of man who would give up easily. “I think they let him die,” she says.

3. The Trump administration is expanding the use of video hearings for migrant children in immigration court. (ABC News) 

Migrant children who have hearings in Houston, inside one of the country’s largest immigration courts, now will be appearing before a judge based in Atlanta. “If it’s in person, the judge would be able to catch body language,” one lawyer told a reporter. “Here, I don’t know if the judge was looking at them at all. I don’t know what she sees.”

The kicker: On Monday, the first day of the change, Judge Sirce Owen in Atlanta saw dozens of children via video conference. They included a confused 7-year-old boy with no lawyer, a teenage mother trying to calm her toddler daughter, and a group of kids all dressed in the same green sweaters. In the Atlanta courtroom, against the din of fuzzy audio, the judge pressed on with the group of seven children from a government-run facility in Corpus Christi, Texas, telling them why they were there and explaining their rights. As the audio interference worsened, Owen narrowed her eyes at the screen and said, “We’re hearing some feedback on the microphone."

Your tips have been vital to our immigration coverage. Keep them coming: [email protected]. 

– Laura C. Morel

Fact-based journalism is worth fighting for.