How many immigrants have to die from COVID-19?

A recent wave of COVID-19 infections and deaths has highlighted the brutal cost of being an essential Hispanic worker.

Latinos are overwhelmingly overrepresented among people infected with the virus relative to their share of the population, according to Rogelio Sáenz, professor of demography at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Sáenz, who wrote recently about the issue on the Latino Decisions blog, analyzed data from the 38 states and the District of Columbia that report COVID-19 infection cases and/or deaths for Latinos.

It’s no surprise that Latinos have been so hard hit by the virus. “Essential” services these days usually consist of harvesting, preparing, cooking, selling or delivering food, and often for companies that don’t offer personal protective equipment, health insurance benefits or paid time off for illness.

Worse, not only are these truly essential workers often toiling in this country without the proper permits and authorizations — for cruelly low wages — but they’re seen by many as disposable and definitelynot-important people.

For example, Wisconsin Supreme Court Chief Justice Patience Roggensack had a telling reaction recently during legal arguments over keeping the state closed for business. In response to the example of Brown County and the JBS Packerland meatpacking plant — which saw coronavirus cases soar from about 60 to almost 800 — she said: “These were due to the meatpacking, though. That’s where Brown County got the flare. It wasn’t just the regular folks in Brown County.”

Worker advocates, like Voces de la Frontera Director Christine

Neumann-Ortiz, told local media that many of the meatpacking plant workers are black and Hispanic, making Roggensack’s statement racist, because it implied those workers’ lives were “less worthy” than the lives of others.

Congressman Mark Pocan, DWis., spoke about the problem on Wednesday during a Facebook live video hosted by the Community Immigration Law Center of Madison, Wisconsin. Pocan told viewers that the Kenosha County Sheriff’s Department moved all of its Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainees out of the detention center as part of its COVID-19 response. However, Pocan said, they scattered the 170 men and women to Illinois, Texas and parts unknown rather than releasing them.

“It’s just a disregard for the people they have in custody,” Pocan said. “We know that ICE is still very active and not taking

COVID-19 into consideration . ... The fact that they’re still doing raids is really crazy.” Pocan also said that he has tried getting information about ICE operations in his state to no avail. “Of my seven years in Congress, they are the hardest agency to get information from, even though I’m on the appropriations committee. In many ways, they act like a rogue agency.”

Pocan was speaking as news broke about the first immigrant in ICE detention who had died of complications from a coronavirus infection.

Just as worker advocates have been predicting for months that “essential” workers were at high risk of being infected with COVID-19, so have activists for unauthorized immigrants been saying that the ongoing immigration crackdowns, presidential bluster and the inhumanity of ICE operations would kill immigrants in detention and put their jailers and caretakers at risk.

The dominoes have started to topple.

Now, how many dead grocery store clerks, meat plant processors and grocery delivery people who don’t have any real access to preventive equipment or health care have to die in order to get some relief for workers who have so far been cut out of federal stimulus packages?

How many detainees and doctors, social workers, pro bono lawyers, prison guards and janitors have to die before ICE, the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Border Patrol pause their mass incarcerations and gathering of people who are at high risk for infection?

And how many times do journalists of color have to tell the same story about how black and brown people are being callously thrown at the pandemic virus before people will start actually caring?