Department of Homeland Security officials have now acknowledged that transferring detained immigrants between facilities during the pandemic spread the coronavirus. 

This admission was made by officials in a draft report obtained by BuzzFeed News, which details the Immigration and Customs Enforcement parent agency’s response to the pandemic. Transferring detainees “made tracking and preventing the spread of COVID-19 difficult,” the report reads.

The report, titled, “DHS COVID-19 After Action Report,” also noted that there were “gaps of information” because medical records systems weren’t sharing information and that the inability to practice social distancing in detention centers contributed to the virus’s spread. “This report is incredibly consistent in reflecting long-standing issues of ICE detainee management and medical care that have only been exacerbated by a pandemic,” a former ICE official told BuzzFeed News.

Detainee transfers were a core issue that we exposed in our story about the New Mexico Department of Health’s frustrations with how ICE has handled the pandemic there. The federal agency wasn’t testing detainees exposed to the virus, failed to secure its own test kits and continued transferring detainees despite warnings from New Mexico health staff that such movement could spread the virus.

One string of emails detailed the transfer of 25 detainees to the Otero County Processing Center in April. One detainee, records showed, had come from the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego. He had developed a cough, body aches and congestion days earlier and was awaiting the results of a COVID-19 test. Hours after the detainee arrived, Otero staff received word that the test had come back positive. A health administrator at the facility wrote to the state health department with the bad news.

In an email to Health Secretary Kathy Kunkel explaining the situation, acting state epidemiologist Chad Smelser wondered why ICE would want to further strain the Otero facility, which already was struggling to contain an outbreak at the time.

“I have never understood the reasons or protocols for these transfers,” he wrote. “Do you have any suggestions on how to deal with this? Could we get a senator to complain?”

We’ve learned of other key developments in ICE’s COVID-19 response in the last few days: 

• According to Reuters, immigrants are facing the longest stays in detention in at least a decade. Its analysis of ICE data shows that the amount of time immigrants spend in detention has tripled when compared with September 2016, before Donald Trump was elected president. ICE says the pandemic has delayed deportations and immigration court proceedings, leading to prolonged detention, at a time when many are urging ICE to release more detainees on parole. 

• Meanwhile, the Adelanto ICE Processing Center northeast of Los Angeles has become the site of the largest outbreak at an ICE detention center. Nearly 20% of detainees at the facility have COVID-19, the Desert Sun in Palm Springs reports. The outbreak comes just a few days after a federal judge criticized ICE and the private contractor running Adelanto, The GEO Group, for its “callous disregard” for the health and well-being of detainees.

• As of Friday, there were nearly 800 active COVID-19 cases among ICE detainees. More than 6,500 detainees have tested positive since March. Eight have died from the virus. 

WE WON A MAJOR AWARD FOR OUR IMMIGRATION REPORTING

My colleague Patrick Michels won a national Edward R. Murrow Award, one of the most prestigious awards in journalism, for his reporting on a Los Angeles immigration judge with a track record of denying asylum claims. 

Before she was a judge, Lorraine Muñoz advocated for farmworkers and refugees. During her 20 years serving in the Los Angeles court, though, she developed a reputation for being a tough judge. Between 2013 and 2018, she denied 97% of asylum claims that came before her, 40% more than the national average.

But Muñoz was also known among attorneys for the way she handled transgender women's cases. She misgendered people in her court in order to keep the written record consistent. And according to court transcripts, Muñoz cast doubt on people's gender identity and dismissed the risks they faced back home.

In an interview with Patrick, Muñoz said the job “wears you down.”

“I was a demanding judge,” Muñoz said. “I have standards. It's just something that I felt was a duty to, you know, do your best. And I demanded that from my lawyers and not everybody likes that.”

Besides Patrick’s win in the investigative reporting category, Reveal won two other Murrow awards as well: one for feature reporting for our episode “To the ends of the Earth” and another for excellence in social media. The Murrow Awards recognize stories that “exemplify the importance and impact of journalism as a service to the community.” 

Revisit Patrick’s story here.

Fact-based journalism is worth fighting for.

3 THINGS WE’RE READING

1. ICE plans to rapidly deport undocumented immigrants who have been in the U.S. for less than two years. (BuzzFeed News)

Expedited removal was designed to quickly deport migrants who had just arrived at the border. On-the-ground officers could deport someone without a judge’s review if they’d been in the country for up to two weeks and were picked up within 100 miles of the border. But now, thanks to an appeals court ruling, the Trump administration is expanding the policy to cover migrants anywhere in the country – not just at the border. Internal emails show that we agents are scheduled to complete a training course on the new policy this week. 

The kicker: Experts, such as Sarah Pierce, an analyst at Migration Policy Institute, have noted that the expedited removal proposal would likely do more to instill fear in the immigrant community than profoundly alter the deportation process within the US. “The vast majority of unauthorized immigrants have lived in the United States for more than two years – over 60% have lived here for 10 years or more – making them ineligible for expedited removal,” she said when the policy was first issued. “But no doubt, removal without due process is a terrifying prospect.”

2. A Guatemalan man had an upcoming hearing before an immigration judge. ICE deported him anyway. (The Intercept) 

In March, before the pandemic hit, Cesar Marroquín arrived at the U.S. border to seek asylum and was taken into custody by Border Patrol officers. Within a few days, he was transferred to the Catahoula Correctional Center and later the River Correctional Facility, both in rural Louisiana. He had an immigration court hearing scheduled for Aug. 19. On that morning, after Marroquín had showered and gotten ready for his day in court, ICE put him on a flight to Guatemala City. By law, ICE couldn’t deport someone unless a judge has ordered their removal.

The kicker: “At 8 a.m. I was showering and getting ready for my hearing,” he said. “Suddenly I was told to gather my things so I could be transferred to another detention center. I was surprised, because the hearing was for 10 a.m. I kept telling the ICE officer, ‘I have court today! I need to call my lawyer!’ The deportation officer said, ‘No, it’s been postponed until September. We’re just moving you in the meantime to another detention center. In Alexandria.’ ”

Marroquín and some other Guatemalan men from his barracks were put in shackles and driven to the airport in Alexandria, Louisiana, where he watched 15 buses discharge shackled detainees who shuffled to a plane. “I protested,” he said. “They told me to sign papers but I refused. They said I would be criminally charged if I didn’t get on the plane. I didn’t sign anything. But I’m a professional, an educated man. I had to respect the authorities. I got on. I was forced to.”

3. A man charged with sexual assault was facing trial in Miami. ICE deported him, and now he’s free in Colombia. (Miami Herald)

The kicker: Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said that within the past four weeks, her office and ICE counterparts have put new procedures in place to help improve communication, so that defendants don’t get deported before prosecutors have a chance to take them to trial. Still, Fernandez Rundle said she was dismayed to learn the man accused of raping a child had been set free in Colombia. “We have very serious concerns that other children are being put at risk,” Fernandez Rundle said. “We can’t allow this to happen back in Colombia just because they’re not our kids.”

NEWS BREAK: 19 MILLION VIEWS AND COUNTING

You might have seen the 22-second TikTok video by now: a guy in a hoodie skateboarding and lip syncing to the Fleetwood Mac hit “Dreams.” If you haven’t, watch it here. Nathan Apodaca is now a TikTok star. The Los Angeles Times’ Laura Zornosa spoke to Apodaca about his sudden rise to social media stardom.  

From the Los Angeles Times story:

When Apodaca, 37, isn’t introducing old-school jams to a younger audience on the popular social video app TikTok, he works as a laborer at a potato warehouse in his native Idaho. (He was born and raised there, though his dad is of Mexican descent and his mom hails from the Northern Arapaho tribe in Wyoming.) 

“We’ve been working ever since the pandemic, getting potatoes out to whoever needs them,” Apodaca told the Los Angeles Times Thursday via Zoom. 

As his viral fame ballooned, Apodaca realized he needed to talk to the big boss at the potato warehouse, where his father also works.

“I was like, ‘So, I don’t know what’s going on. I have some things going on where I have a couple interviews. I just need to get this taken care of,’ ” he said.

“Well, we’re proud of you,” his boss responded. “We’re excited for you.”

Within a few days, Apodaca had an L.A.-based manager fielding interview requests.
 

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

– Laura C. Morel