Yesterday, the Forum hosted a press call with public health, faith, law enforcement and business leaders urging the Trump administration and Congress to protect the health and well-being of immigrants and refugees as part of the COVID-19 pandemic response. You can listen to a recording of the call here.

Among the important policy solutions we covered was the need for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to immediately release all nonviolent detainees in an effort to prevent outbreaks inside facilities. As James Lopez, former Chief of the East Patrol Division for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, put it, “[Detention] facilities are not designed to handle this type of medical emergency. Those detainees who become acute patients … will be transported to local medical hospitals, further stressing critically scarce resources. … Reducing the at-risk population of detainees is a worthy and viable option. We can continue to discuss immigration policy when the COVID-19 crisis is over. Now is the time for thoughtful and decisive leadership that protects life, preserves vital medical resources and reduces the threat of this public medical crisis.” Chief Lopez’s opening statement is worth the listen.

In an op-ed for the National Interest, Jonathan Haggerty, a criminal justice fellow at the R Street Institute, also makes the case for releasing detainees, pointing to the likelihood of a COVID-19 spread in conditions where social distancing isn’t possible and individuals live in “appalling” conditions. “The public health and safety benefits far outweigh any concerns related to release,” Haggerty writes. “The novel coronavirus has revealed the glaring government failure that is the immigrant detention apparatus.”

Warnings from Lopez, Haggerty and others are becoming reality. Yesterday, three unaccompanied children in custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) in New York tested positive for the coronavirus, Camilo Montoya-Galvez reports for CBS News. Meanwhile, a judge for the Southern District of New York took the critical step of releasing 10 medically compromised ICE detainees from Bergen, Hudson & Essex jails in New Jersey, per Matt Katz of WNYC. The ruling is the first of its kind so far in the country, detailing the unsafe conditions within detention facilities and finding the detainees face a “severe, and quite possibly fatal, infection if they remain in immigration detention.”

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EXCLUDED – The $2 trillion stimulus passed by the Senate early yesterday excludes relief for undocumented immigrants who are among the most vulnerable American taxpayers, writes Tim Breene, CEO of the World Relief Fund, in an op-ed for CNN Business. Undocumented immigrants — as well as roughly 5 million U.S. born children of immigrants — are already excluded from social safety net programs. Now, they’ll be the most likely to face hunger and eviction and the least likely to receive health care. “We should be fair to these American taxpayers, among the most vulnerable at all times but more so now,” Breene writes. “Congress should move quickly to send stimulus checks — and send them, in particular, to these uniquely vulnerable taxpayers.”

THEIR OWN WORDS – For a must-read piece for Gothamist/WNYC, Matt Katz spoke to several ICE detainees behind bars in New York and New Jersey who are growing more and more anxious about the coronavirus pandemic and agitating for release. “You see one person cough, everybody hits the ground,” said Christopher O’Brien, a detainee in New York who wants to be deported back to the United Kingdom but had his court date postponed due to the coronavirus. “Every little cough, every little thing – we’re thinking it’s the end.” Detainees reported lack of access to soap and cleaning supplies, and said none of the jails are offering gloves or masks for protection.

STRANDED – Hundreds of Americans remain stranded outside of the country after airlines canceled flights and countries shut their borders in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, reports Kevin Krause for The Dallas Morning News. Patricia Maldonado, 57, is one of about 200 Americans stranded in Honduras who say they’ve been abandoned by their government and by U.S. airlines. Maldonado is a mom of three from North Texas who suffers from high blood pressure and lupus. “For me, my home is in the United States. I miss my children,” she said. “We are here and don’t know what to do or who to trust.”

THIN ICE – Acting ICE Director Matt Albence is on “thin ice” with the Trump administration after announcing immigration authorities would halt most enforcement efforts during the coronavirus outbreak, report Daniel Lippman and Anita Kumar for Politico. The stance, which is “similar to an Obama administration approach,” drew fire from Trump officials. ICE announced last week that it would “prioritize deportation for foreign nationals who have committed crimes or pose a threat to public safety, and not those at doctors’ offices and hospitals.”

EUROPEAN FARMWORKERS – As European countries lock down their borders in response to the coronavirus pandemic, farmers are sounding the alarm that the seasonal farmworkers they rely on won’t be able to get in, report Liz Alderman, Melissa Eddy and Amie Tsang for The New York Times. “European governments have declared food supplies a matter of national security as millions flock to supermarkets to brace for prolonged home confinement,” they write. “But border lockdowns have immobilized legions of seasonal workers from Eastern Europe who toil in fields from Spain to Sweden, forcing a rapid rethink of how to supply labor to those farms.” Germany, France, Spain and other nations are now calling on their own citizens to join the farming workforce, though attracting skilled laborers with the training and endurance needed is shaping up to be a “herculean task.”

Thanks for reading and stay healthy,

Ali