Release detained immigrants to cut COVID deaths
There are many examples to illustrate the constant increases of infection rates of COVID-19 seen at detention centers across the U.S.
A federal judge in Rhode Island released a detainee from Wyatt Detention Facility after 99 of the 537 detainees and 11 staff had active COVID-19 cases.
Over 40 percent of staff members at the Eloy Detention Center in Arizona tested positive for COVID-19.
Nearly 20 percent of all detainees in Adelanto Detention Center in Southern California have tested positive for COVID-19.
And three detainees have died of COVID-19 at Stewart Detention Center in Georgia.
Releasing detainees from immigration detention is necessary to prevent an outbreak of coronavirus, exhausting medical care centers in and around detention centers, and prevent more death among immigrant communities.
Detention centers are designed to house individuals in a small space with shared living, eating and bathing facilities. This proximity of detainees allows fewer guards and staff to monitor the detained population, an efficient model for profit driven centers who draw income from each detainee. These conditions are precisely those in which the virus is most likely to spread.
Is it possible to stop the spread of coronavirus in these settings? Perhaps, but it requires adherence to public health guidelines, which require effort, organization, and political will.
Providing personal protective equipment, or PPEs, to all detainees would be the least expensive option to prevent the spread of coronavirus, but would not be as effective as administrative controls or engineering controls.
However, numerous cases have shown the inability of detention centers to implement the simplest of infection controls, as detainees are frequently unable to access PPEs. Nor is there the political will to keep detainees healthy. Even before COVID-19, the world’s attention was fixed on the appalling state of these facilities, where we saw numerous deaths of children in custody.
Do detention centers have the medical resources to deal with the coronavirus outbreaks? This is unlikely, as detention centers are not designed to handle complicated medical needs nor a large volume of cases.
A spike in coronavirus among detainees would likely overwhelm detention centers’ medical facilities, forcing them to rely on nearby community health care facilities that are already strained. A recent study found that outbreaks in less than 10 percent of ICE facilities would overwhelm ICU beds within a 50-mile radius of those facilities in about three months.
There is a fear that release from detention will move infection from detention centers into communities — but this is already occurring. Staff commute from their jobs in detention centers to their homes, and detainees are transferred from one facility to another.
ICE does not test detainees prior to transfer unless detainees present coronavirus symptoms, resulting in the transfer of asymptomatic individuals to other facilities.
Releasing detainees can be done safely and in line with public health recommendations. The Women’s Refugee Commission, in collaboration with Physicians for Human Rights and Freedom for Immigrants, has provided guidelines for ICE and receiving communities related to preparation of medical documentation and communication with lawyers and sponsors, and offers suggestions for preventive measures prior to release.
Some have argued for the use of mass deportation to empty detention centers. But mass deportation is not only inhumane, as it can accelerate the spread of the coronavirus to vulnerable communities abroad, but is simply not legal.
Deportation — the result of an administrative determination related to a detainee’s immigration status — cannot simply be subverted as a solution to infection disease spread. Our recommendation for the release of detainees not only aligns with evidence-based public health practice but is also consistent with immigration law.
Reducing the detained population is a logical, public healthoriented, and humane next step necessary to prevent rapid spread of the coronavirus among a vulnerable population. Releasing detainees is a public health imperative.
William D. Lopez is a clinical assistant professor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. Gregg Gonsalves is assistant professor of epidemiology of microbial diseases at the Yale School of Public Health and co-director of the Yale Global Health Justice Partnership.