The Borderline: 04/07–04/13

Bringing you the latest on immigration and border issues

Our header artwork, designed by Christian Thorsberg.

EDITORS’ NOTE

Hi everyone! We hope you are safe and well wherever you are. This is the seventeenth edition of The Borderline, Stories from the Border’s weekly newsletter on immigration and border issues. This is our curated summary of what we’ve been reading and working on throughout the semester. With all of us social distancing and doing our part to alleviate the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re publishing from our own corners of the country: Arizona, California, Texas, and Chicagoland.

This week, we are learning in graphic detail the conditions that detained migrants in ICE detention facilities are subjected to as they voice out dissent against the inadequate care and COVID-19 preventive measures given to detainees. In an ICE detention center in Alabama, migrants threatened suicide to make their pleas heard. ICE and Border Patrol officials have been consistent in their response to deny the accounts of their detainees. In Chula Vista, California, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) are standing by their own version of how a detainee gave birth that rejects the detained woman’s story that she had to give birth holding on to the side of a garbage can and still wearing pants while in custody.

With 10 detained migrants being infected by COVID-19 in the ICE Otay Mesa Detention Center near Chula Vista, detainees have described the center, run by private prison contractor CoreCivic, as a “death trap.” In response to the cases of COVID-19 in this San Diego detention center, ICE said that it is reviewing cases for release nationwide for people who are vulnerable to the virus. However, due to the system of “cohorting” where detainees who may have been exposed to COVID-19 are grouped together instead of individually isolated, concerns are raised that such measures may be too late for vulnerable individuals who may have already been exposed to the virus, which is the reason why the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) advised against the practice. Along with immigrants contracting the virus in detention centers, CBP recently confirmed 160 COVID-19 cases among officers and agents.

In Bristol, Massachusetts, a class action lawsuit was filed to have nearly 150 detained migrants released where, like most of the migrants detained by ICE in the country, most are charged for civil immigration violations and not criminal offenses. Similarly, immigration advocates in Massachusetts are seeking to stop deportation flights bound for Haiti where Haitian nationals detained by ICE in Boston are being sent back to a country that is still reeling from a cholera outbreak as well as from an earthquake that took place 10 years ago.

We are seeing the shutdown of the country’s asylum system, which violates the 1951 U.N. Refugee Convention and a 1980 U.S. law that established the asylum system. Nearly 10,000 people have been deported to Mexico.

To stay updated, follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook @borderstoriesAZ.

– Jeromel

DEEP DIVES

We’re learning about the impact of reduced tax revenue in the Trump administration increase of the U.S. citizenship application fee and its proposal to revoke its fee waiver program for those with financial needs. About non-U.S.citizen immigrants that make up 6.8% of the U.S. workforce in industries that are essential to fight COVID-19 or the ones that have seen large lay-offs. About the federal government denying 4.3 million of them access to its $2.3 trillion coronavirus aid program. About the conditions of ICE detention centers in Louisiana from detained asylum seekers that raise the same concern of poor and cramped conditions as detained asylum seekers have in other detention centers. About lawmakers urging Trump to halt border wall construction and to divert funds to fight COVID-19 instead.

WEEKLY ROUNDUP

NATION

ENFORCEMENT:

• U.S. expels 6,300 migrants at the border, shuts off asylum under coronavirus order: How can the U.S. contribute to the global effort against COVID-19 if current U.S. immigration policy could only exacerbate coronavirus outbreaks in countries that are already in a greater shortage of resources to handle them?
• U.S. deports 400 migrant children under new coronavirus rules: What could be the result of these new U.S. immigration rules of rapid deportation? How would they affect the safety and health of already vulnerable children?
• Customs and Border Protection union calls for more protection against COVID-19: What does this reflect on Border Patrol’s handle of the coronavirus?
• ICE to deport Haitians despite coronavirus concerns: In light of the pandemic, how are other countries being put at risk by U.S. immigration policy of continuing to deport immigrants?

RULINGS:

• U.S. judge orders ICE to say how many detained migrants are being released under expanded coronavirus medical reviews: With ICE’s reluctance of releasing information about their own detention procedures, how can they be held accountable on their COVID-19 prevention responses?
• Immigrant advocates sue to get vulnerable detainees released from ICE custody amid coronavirus: With detained immigrants afraid for their own lives in ICE detention facilities where new cases of COVID-19 are being reported, are there other ways for advocates to compel ICE to release all detained migrants through the legal process of lawsuits?

ARIZONA:

• Border agent arrested on suspicion of child sex crimes after 4-hour standoff in Cochise County church: Did this border agent’s abuses involve detained young migrants? And what is the system in place for undocumented immigrants to report sexual harrassment and assault violations from Border Patrol and ICE officials? Does such a system exist where the safety and dignity of immigrants are the priority?
• 6 border officers in Arizona test positive for coronavirus: Do Border Patrol and ICE employees feel that sufficient COVID-19 prevention measures are being done in their workplace?

CHICAGOLAND:

• Mayor Lightfoot’s order gives immigrants access to Chicago’s coronavirus relief: Will other municipalities in the Chicago area and the country follow suit to provide COVID-19 relief and assistance to immigrants regardless of status?
• After 4 test positive for coronavirus at downstate ICE detention center, local immigration organization calls on Feds to release medically vulnerable immigrants: With ICE determined to keep up the mass detention of immigrants, how prepared are they to handle a COVID-19 outbreak in detention centers?

CALIFORNIA:

• Over 100 immigrants detained in California staging hunger strike: As detained migrants fight for their own health and safety amidst the conditions of ICE detention centers and the new cases of COVID-19 happening in them, will ICE and the federal government be pressured to consider the health and well-being of immigrants in light of the pandemic?
• Woman gives birth standing with trousers on while detained at US-Mexico border: Would the Department of Homeland Security conduct an investigation into this report of abuse and neglect on the health and well-being of detained migrants? As Border Patrol and ICE deny the reports of abuse and neglect from their own detained migrants, how does this reflect the current conditions of detention centers with the concern of COVID-19 outbreaks taking place?
• CA judge: ICE detainees must have access to private calls with lawyers: Would immigration courts and deportation proceedings still continue in light of the pandemic and the cases of COVID-19 spreading in ICE detention facilities?
• 10 detainees now positive for COVID-19 at Otay Mesa Detention Center: With ICE having to resort to “cohorting” where detainees with COVID-19 symptoms are quarantined together due to a lack of space to individually isolate and treat patients, will ICE admit that their detention centers are not able to meet CDC recommendations, standards, and measures to prevent COVID-19 infections?

TEXAS:

• Millions wasted on West Texas immigration detention facility: With about $66 million spent to maintain a detention center for 2,500 people that only had at most 70 detainees, were the quality conditions for detained migrants at this center different from other ICE detention centers?
• Two cases of coronavirus detected at El Paso-area immigrant detention center: Would the level of healthcare and COVID-19 treatment provided to detained migrants be of the same quality and standard as that of ICE employees?