The last two weeks have been a whirlwind for all of us. Governors activated emergency orders as COVID-19 swept across state lines. Schools closed. Bars and restaurants shuttered. State courts postponed hearings and trials. The NBA suspended the rest of this year’s season.

But as many corners of America grinded to a halt to promote the social distancing essential for curbing the spread of the new coronavirus, the U.S. immigration system continued operating under business as usual, placing immigrants, attorneys and government employees at risk, our recent investigation has found.

We looked at multiple agencies across two federal departments. The situation in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities, where medical care has come under scrutiny for years, is particularly alarming. 

ICE officials suspended social visits and began screening newly arrived detainees for symptoms. But inside, detainees said, little else has changed. My colleague Patrick Michels recently spoke to Arleen Aileen Pérez Vila. Her daughter, Arlet Victoria Remón Pérez, has spent more than nine months in a Louisiana detention center. 

Remón studied medicine in Cuba and told her mother that the center is not equipped to handle the coronavirus outbreak. Now Pérez worries that her daughter won’t receive proper medical attention if the virus reaches the facility. Remón has severe asthma, which puts her at high risk for complications from the virus. 

“The thought that she was coming to the land of freedom and liberty only to find that it’s in the grip of a monster has been difficult to reconcile,” Pérez said.

Advocates are calling on ICE to release detainees, in particular those who have an elevated risk of falling severely ill from COVID-19. The agency could do it. Most of the nearly 40,000 people in ICE detention are there not because the law requires it, but because the agency has dramatically curtailed parole under President Donald Trump. 

In addition, at the beginning of the week, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services offices remained open, forcing immigrants and their lawyers to wait for appointments in often-crowded lobbies. Several USCIS employees told my colleague Aura Bogado that they were bringing in soap from home because their office bathrooms were out. Two officers also said they’ve been rationing disinfectant wipes, also brought from home, to wipe down high-touch areas in their offices between interviews with immigrants.

In New York City, where schools closed Monday, two federally funded learning center locations that serve unaccompanied migrant children remained open. While children didn’t show up to the centers, Cayuga Centers workers still came in because the program wasn’t officially suspended. A few hours after our story published, Cayuga Centers President Ed Hayes told employees that the nonprofit now would offer 240 paid hours of time off.

New decisions are trickling in by the hour. On Wednesday, USCIS announced it was closing its offices until at least April 1. And the immigration courts, known as the Executive Office for Immigration Review, continued to announce courtroom closures amid calls from organizations representing judges, ICE prosecutors and immigration attorneys to shut down its 68 courts.

“Failing to take this action now,” their public letter reads, “will exacerbate a once in a century public health crisis.”

Read our story here.

We’ll continue monitoring COVID-19 effects on the immigration system in the weeks to come. If you have any tips, email us at [email protected].
 

OTHER COVID-19 DEVELOPMENTS WE’RE WATCHING

The U.S. plans to close its borders. The U.S. and Canadian governments have agreed to close the northern border to all travel related to recreation and tourism. According to Politico, it is the most drastic closure between both countries since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Meanwhile, the Trump administration also is planning to turn back any migrants at the southern border. Sources told The New York Times that migrants would be returned to Mexico swiftly, without being detained or offered due process. Legal experts say the plan would violate laws that protect people seeking refuge in the United States. 

Guatemala resumes deportation flights from the U.S. On Tuesday, Guatemala became the first Central American country to block deportation flights from the U.S. in an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19, the Los Angeles Times reported. But a day after the announcement, the country reversed course and resumed those flights for Guatemalan nationals. The Guatemalan government said it was accepting 99 deportees who would be placed on home quarantine Thursday.
 

3 THINGS WE’RE READING

1. Amid deportation fears and the new “public charge” rule, many immigrants may be wary of self-isolating or seeking medical care for COVID-19. (The New York Times)

Immigrants may be among the most vulnerable populations as the coronavirus spreads across the country. Many are worried that seeking medical attention will affect their immigration status under a new Trump rule that recently went into effect. Others wonder whether seeking help will land them on immigration authorities’ radar. “The fear that this administration has fueled in immigrant communities is thwarting efforts to protect the public health of everybody,” one attorney said.

The kicker: Even before the coronavirus arrived in the United States, having a large population that feels disenfranchised from the mainstream medical community heightened the risk for transmission of infectious diseases, said Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global health law at Georgetown University and adviser to the World Health Organization. “The first rule of public health is to gain people’s trust to come forward: People who don’t seek care cannot be tested or treated, and their contacts won’t be traced,” he said. “The last thing immigrants want to do in this political environment is tell health officials about their friends who are also unlawfully here,” Mr. Gostin said.

2. As California grinds to a halt amid the COVID-19 crisis, ICE officers in the state continue to make arrests. (Los Angeles Times)

On the same day that the governor and Los Angeles mayor announced additional measures to stem the spread of the coronavirus, ICE officers scattered across the city to make arrests. The virus has triggered changes in their own agency. A citizens academy recently was postponed, and officers now carry face masks and hand sanitizer in their vehicles.

The kicker: Over the weekend, (David Marin, director of enforcement and removal operations for ICE in L.A.) sat down with senior leadership to determine which jobs might allow staff to telework. Aside from mission support specialists, that seemed out of the question. “Our job is not a job that you can telework from,” Marin said. “Processing people or doing check-ins with people, that can’t be done via telework.” Later that morning, officers waited outside the last house on their list that day. They usually saw their target leave his home between 8:45 and 9. But that morning, they waited an hour and a half and never saw him. “This guy’s late,” Marin said, speculating that he’d changed his pattern “because of coronavirus.”

An update: After this story was published, ICE announced that it was temporarily halting arrests “except for efforts to deport foreign nationals who have committed crimes or who pose a threat to public safety,” The Washington Post reported.

3. Janitors are disinfecting office spaces, often without proper protection and information about coronavirus risks. (The New York Times) 

As more Americans work from home and leave their office cubicles behind, janitors, many of them immigrants, are stepping in to clean their workspaces while putting themselves at risk of the virus and harsh cleaning chemicals that could affect their health. After a floor of a building in San Francisco’s financial district closed, no one told the janitors the reason why: A worker had contracted the virus. 

The kicker: Janitors cleaning the Amazon headquarters in Seattle complained that a new disinfectant they were asked to use made their eyes and skin burn. In San Francisco, janitors said they have been asked to clean offices without having been told that people who had or were exposed to the virus had worked there. Janitors wonder why they are left in the dark when companies go to great lengths to ensure that the tech, finance and other workers occupying the buildings they clean are aware of the most remote possibility of coming into contact with the virus. It shows, they say, how disparities play out in a public health crisis – how their lives sometimes seem to be valued less than those of people with resources and power.
 

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

– Laura C. Morel

Fact-based journalism is worth fighting for.