The first immigrant currently being held in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention has tested positive for the coronavirus, reports Justine Coleman for The Hill. The individual is a 31-year-old Mexican immigrant currently being held in New Jersey’s Bergen County Jail, where a correctional officer also tested positive over the weekend. The news will surely fuel calls for ICE to evacuate centers of vulnerable detainees. “The suffering and death that will occur is unnecessary and preventable,” said Andrea Flores, deputy director of policy in the Equality Division at the ACLU. “ICE must take immediate and drastic steps to reduce the number of people in detention. If it doesn’t, it will be to blame for a humanitarian crisis.”

Meanwhile in Houston, an employee at an ICE detention center housing 833 men and women also tested positive for the virus, Elizabeth Trovall reports for Houston Public Media. Houston-area immigration attorneys are calling for ICE to release all detainees in the region, highlighting the high risk of transmission for other detainees.

As we’ve written here previously, there are more than 37,000 ICE detainees closely confined across the country who remain extremely susceptible to the virus’ spread. And ICYMI, former Acting Director of ICE John Sandweg wrote in an op-ed for The Atlantic that “the thousands of detainees who pose no threat to public safety and do not constitute an unmanageable flight risk” should be released from custody.

Welcome to Wednesday’s edition of Noorani’s Notes. Have a story you’d like us to include? Email me at [email protected].

DEADLINES – Thousands of immigration filings from people already in the U.S. will be due in the coming weeks — and the administration must act now to extend those deadlines, writes León Rodríguez, former director of U.S Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), in a Washington Post op-ed. Doing so could save thousands of lives of both immigrants and immigration officials. “USCIS has the power with just a quickly drafted notice to save people simply by extending for the duration of the pandemic any deadlines that will affect foreign nationals currently in the United States,” Rodríguez writes. “This would include granting automatic extensions for those whose status will expire during the national emergency, and for a reasonable period thereafter; excusing the late filing of change-of-status requests; and granting ‘deferred action’ status for those whose status will be expiring but who otherwise have no legal avenue for extension.”

HUNGER STRIKE – Amid fears over COVID-19’s potential spread in ICE detention centers, immigrants detained in a New Jersey facility have launched a hunger strike to secure soap and toilet paper, reports Dara Lind for ProPublica. In audio obtained by ProPublica, a detainee complains that guards have told them, “Well, you’re going to have to die of something.” The facility is one of at least three in New Jersey where detainees are striking over officials’ failure to protect them from COVID-19. “In the recording, [detainee Ronal] Umaña explained that the facility has provided hand sanitizer for guards but not for detainees. Umaña said detainees receive a single bar of soap for a week, both for showering and washing hands; if they want more, they must buy it from the prison commissary for $1.70.”

GETTING SICKER – A 21-year-old Honduran woman who is HIV-positive was sent across the border to Mexico without any medication to wait for her U.S. asylum hearing, reports Kevin Sieff for The Washington Post. While U.S. Customs and Border Protection has said migrants with severe medical conditions could be exempt from the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) — also know as “Remain in Mexico” — asylum seekers with HIV/AIDS and other life-threatening diseases have said that has not been the case. “I’m just sitting here getting sicker without help,” Fernanda, the Honduran asylum seeker, told the Post from a migrant shelter in Mexico.

STATE OF IMMIGRATION – The American Action Forum has released a new report outlining the state of immigration during the coronavirus pandemic, finding that the Trump administration’s latest restrictions could potentially hurt the U.S. economy over the long term. Actions to restrict legal immigration, including a suspension of visa processing for individuals looking to work and live in the U.S., would “likely have significant long-term negative impacts on productivity, output, and economic growth” if they were to continue, writes Jacqueline Varas, Director of Immigration and Trade policy at the American Action Forum.

WHAT I WANT TO READ – With all the powerful immigration books on the market these days, it can be hard to prioritize the list. But with recommendations from friends across the movement, there is one that has quickly risen to the top of the list: “The Undocumented Americans” by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio. In a New York Times review, Caitlin Dickerson writes that Villavicencio tells “‘the full story’ of what it means to be undocumented in America, in all of its fraughtness and complexity, challenging the usual good and evil categories through a series of memoir-infused reported essays.”

Stay safe, safe healthy,

Ali