We often bring you stories here about government secrecy, human rights violations and injustice. Our immigration coverage can be heavy to read, especially during this global pandemic, when each news headline is scarier than the last one.

But we have some good news to share: One of the sources in my story about conditions in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers was released last week.

You might remember Manuel Rodriguez Ruiz, an asylum seeker from Cuba. In March, while being held at the Pine Prairie ICE Processing Center in Louisiana, Rodriguez told me about how conditions inside had left him sleepless, staring up at the bunk bed mattress above him. “This isn’t about liberty anymore. This is about our health and our lives,” he told me. Rodriguez’s story was also featured on our Reveal episode, “Detained and Exposed.”

Rodriguez likely wouldn’t have been detained before the Trump era. He sought asylum at a port of entry, claiming he’d faced persecution at the hands of Cuba’s communist government. He spent nearly 10 months in Pine Prairie as his immigration case slogged through court. 

While in ICE custody, Rodriguez had requested parole, a mechanism through which asylum seekers can be released while they await a decision on their case. ICE denied his requests multiple times after concluding that he had no community ties and was a flight risk, even though he has a girlfriend in the U.S. and no criminal record in Cuba. On at least two occasions, documents show, the agency denied his request because he had already previously requested parole. Rodriguez also has asthma, which could put him at higher risk of complications from COVID-19. 

A decade ago, ICE granted about 90% of parole requests. But under the Trump administration, ICE has regularly denied parole to asylum seekers like Rodriguez. The Southern Poverty Law Center sued the Department of Homeland Security after it discovered that the New Orleans ICE office, which handles parole requests for Louisiana and four other states, had granted parole in just two of the 130 requests it received in 2018. 

On Friday, Rodriguez’s girlfriend received a call from ICE: his parole was suddenly approved. The couple was reunited over the weekend.

Rodriguez was one of two sources quoted in my April 7 story who were subsequently suspended from a video visitation app, GettingOut, that allowed them to speak to their loved ones. 

A few weeks ago, I told you that our attorney sent a letter to the Pine Prairie warden and ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility, arguing that cutting off the men’s access to GettingOut constituted a clear violation of the First Amendment rights of both Reveal and the detained men.

“Rather than addressing these grave concerns, your facility appears to have retaliated against those who spoke to Reveal,” the letter reads.

I learned on Monday that my other source, Pedro Iglesias Tamayo, is no longer suspended on the app. The suspension was hard for Iglesias and his mother in Cuba. Now, for the first time in weeks, they can freely talk to each other using the app. 

An attorney representing the GEO Group, the private contractor that runs Pine Prairie, responded to our letter. The suspensions, he said, were not a result of retaliation, “but because (the detainees) violated rules by publishing photos inside the facility thereby creating a security risk.” It’s unclear how Iglesias and Rodriguez violated this rule. During my reporting, I took a screenshot of toiletries and soap that Iglesias showed me during our video chats. We published those photos in the story. They did not take or publish any photos that I am aware of.

The letter also states that detainees’ claims about lacking soap and masks in Pine Prairie are “simply untrue.” Detainees have “ample access to soap” and are being supplied with three surgical masks per week, the GEO Group attorney wrote. Throughout the course of my reporting, several detainees and their family members told me that there was no access to masks or hand sanitizer, and that soap was rationed out each week.

When I started reporting on Pine Prairie, there were no confirmed COVID-19 cases in the facility. As of Wednesday, there are 26. In total, 753 detainees have tested positive for the virus, a 53 percent increase from a week ago.

Six weeks ago, just two detainees had tested positive.

Our attorney plans to respond to the GEO Group’s letter. We’ll keep you posted here on any developments.

FIRST ICE DETAINEE DIES FROM COVID-19

A 57-year-old man who contracted the virus while at an ICE detention facility died at a California hospital on Wednesday, according to news reports. The Washington Post reports that Carlos Escobedo Mejia was hospitalized on April 24, the same day he tested positive. Escobedo, who was from El Salvador, had diabetes and high blood pressure, which can heighten the risk of complications from the virus.

Last month, a federal judge ordered ICE to consider releasing all detainees at higher risk of complications from the virus. According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, “Escobar Mejia was on ICE’s list, but he was already in the hospital.”

Escobedo had been detained at the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego since January. The facility is the site of the largest COVID-19 outbreak in ICE detention. As of Friday, 133 detainees and 10 ICE employees had tested positive there. 

 
A Q&A ABOUT OUR ICE DETENTION REPORTING

Our story about Pine Prairie was featured in the Center for Public Integrity’s “Watchdog Q&A,” which highlights the work of investigative reporters. The center asked me about how we found this story and the challenges we faced reporting it. 

Here’s what I told them about how we found the story:  

When we started learning about the extent of COVID-19, we immediately imagined that people in immigration detention centers would be at risk of the virus because it’s impossible to practice social distancing inside these facilities and detainees have limited access to medical care. One of my colleagues put me in touch with family members of asylum seekers in Louisiana, and that’s how the foundation of my reporting got started.

Read the Q&A here.

3 THINGS WE’RE READING 

1. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, a White House adviser tried to use disease spread as a justification to limit immigration. (The New York Times) 

President Trump’s adviser on immigration, Stephen Miller, has pushed for the president to invoke “broad public health powers” to curtail immigration in 2018 when large “caravans” of asylum seekers traveled to the border, and again in 2019 during a mumps outbreak inside ICE detention facilities. The federal law allows “the surgeon general and president to block people from entering the United States when it is necessary to avert a ‘serious danger’ posed by the presence of a communicable disease in foreign countries.” 

The kicker: But what has been billed by the White House as an urgent response to the coronavirus pandemic was in large part repurposed from old draft executive orders and policy discussions that have taken place repeatedly since Mr. Trump took office and have now gained new legitimacy, three former officials who were involved in the earlier deliberations said. One official said the ideas about invoking public health and other emergency powers had been on a “wish list” of about 50 ideas to curtail immigration that Mr. Miller crafted within the first six months of the administration.

2. Across the world, thousands of migrants are stranded as countries clamp down during the COVID-19 pandemic. (Los Angeles Times)

Migrants traveling across deserts and sea are finding themselves trapped between the homes they fled and the countries that won’t grant them entry. Since World War II, international laws protect immigrants seeking refuge in another country. But nations have the right to shut down their borders during a public health crisis.

3.  DACA recipients are working on the front lines as they wait for the U.S. Supreme Court to decide their futures. (Texas Tribune) 

Nationwide, 27,000 young undocumented immigrants known as Dreamers are healthcare workers, including nurses, physician assistants, and home health aides. While they work on the front lines of the pandemic, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule this summer on the legality of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the Obama-era program that allows Dreamers to remain in the U.S. 

The kicker: "As the number of [coronavirus] cases rises in a particular area, the strain on health care institutions increases almost overnight, so you need a robust workforce and that includes not only physicians and nurses and physician assistants, but you need all hands on deck," (Frank Trinity, the Association of American Medical Colleges chief legal officer) said. "And we know that during this pandemic crisis, individuals in DACA status have stepped up to fill critical needs in the community at a personal risk."
 

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

– Laura C. Morel

Fact-based journalism is worth fighting for.