by Katherine Kaufka Walts
As COVID-19 rapidly advances across the country, local justice systems are focusing their resources on essential services. Police and prosecutors are focusing on violent crimes, detainees are being released, and criminal courts are prioritizing the most serious criminal offenses. These efforts reflect a commitment to saving both lives and taxpayer dollars through the pandemic. Meanwhile, U.S. immigration systems are operating under the status quo, with devastating consequences.
Life continues as usual for the 38,000 immigrants who are detained in the US, including approximately 7,000 children. It’s important to remember — these individuals are not serving time for a crime. Instead, they are waiting for a hearing to determine whether they can legally remain in the country under civil proceedings.
On the day California issued its initial social-distancing order, it was still business as usual for ICE agents, who, newly armed with protective health gear, including gloves and N95 masks, continued to apprehend immigrants. The same week, the Department of Justice ordered all multilingual CDC posters demonstrating procedures to minimize COVID-19 contamination to be removed from immigration courtrooms. (The order was shortly reversed after a backlash from immigration judges.) Immigration courts continue to operate at full speed, ignoring health-care risks and shelter-in-place orders.
In the 140 immigration facilities detaining adults and families, social distancing is not an option, as a group of Loyola University Chicago law students and I found when we visited immigration detention facilities in Arizona earlier this month. We entered prison-like facilities, each housing over 1,000 detainees, surrounded by endless rows of razor wire and armed guards. Detainees share cells and are not allowed to move through the facilities without a guard escort. They eat in communal spaces, and shower in communal spaces. The same days we heard detainees tell us about sexual assault, murder, and persecution they suffered in their home country, we heard guards laughing at the detainees, joking that they should “turn on the sprinklers” to make them move faster. We reviewed reports documenting sexual abuse of minors and limited access to medical care for immigrants in federal custody. But the threat of COVID-19 was also on our minds — and theirs.
While there are contracted cleaning services at the facilities, detainees who opt in to work, provide cleaning services for a mere $1 a day. A lawsuit filed against DHS last week alleges that gloves, hand sanitizer, masks, and other essential supplies are not available inside detention facilities. Government attorneys have argued that soap and toothpaste are “non-essential” items for immigrant children placed in federal custody.
By failing to close immigration courts and detention centers, the federal government is telling immigrants their lives do not matter. It also increases the risk of transmission of COVID-19, with potentially deadly consequences not only for detained immigrants, but also for immigration court personnel, ICE officers, detention staff, and the general public. Regardless of one’s views on immigration, we all should all have a shared goal of saving lives.
Katherine Kaufka Walts is a Clinical Professor of Law and Director, Center for the Human Rights of Children, Loyola University Chicago, School of Law. This piece is reprinted with permission. You can follow her work here.