97 with COVID sent to center
They were among those who arrived at Aurora ICE facility amid border surge
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Aurora experienced its largest COVID19 outbreak to date when 97 migrants who were moved last month to the detention center from the southern border were found to be infected with the virus, raising questions about testing and migrant transfers during a pandemic.
The COVID-positive cases were found in a group of more than 200 migrants who were transferred to Aurora during the second half of April from detention facilities along the border, ICE spokeswoman Alethea Smock said.
The bulk of those detainees, she said, came from U.S. Customs and Border Protection facilities where, according to news reports, coronavirus testing has been compromised by the sheer number of people crossing the border. The New York Times reported that the more than 170,000 migrants apprehended in March were the most in any month in at least 15 years.
Both Democratic U.S. Rep. Jason Crow of Aurora and Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman are calling on the Biden administration to address the issue.
Coffman called the episode “incredibly irresponsible.”
“Under no circumstances should COVID-positive detainees be brought to the Aurora ICE facility,” he said. “They need to be tested at the border and if they test positive for COVID they need to be quarantined, according to CDC guidelines, before they are allowed to be transferred.”
Smock said she did not know exactly where on the border the migrants came from or why they were sent. She also was unable to say whether they had been tested by border patrol officials before being sent to Aurora.
But Smock said the detainees were tested and isolated at the ICE facility in Aurora.
“Medical center staff took the necessary steps to quickly isolate the exposed detainees, provide proper medical care and prevent further spread of infection within the facility to detainees already in residence,” she said.
Last week, The New York Times reported the U.S. Border Patrol is “conducting no testing for the coronavirus during the several days that the newly arrived migrants are in U.S. custody except in cases where migrants show obvious symptoms.”
When asked about testing, the Customs and Border Patrol sent The Post a statement, saying “suspected COVID-19 cases are referred to local health systems for appropriate testing, diagnosis, and treatment,” adding that the approach is “consistent with longstanding CBP procedures for preventing the spread of
communicable diseases.”
While the Biden administration continues to expel most single adults and families under a public health order issued by President Donald Trump at the start of the pandemic, it is allowing teens and children to stay, at least temporarily. Republicans criticize President Joe Biden for what they view as an approach that encourages illegal border crossings while some Democrats fret over the prolonged detention of minors.
Crow told The Denver Post that his office has asked the Biden administration and, previously, the Trump administration, to stop the transfer of detained migrants during the pandemic.
In November, Crow sponsored the End Transfer of Detained Immigrants Act, which didn’t go anywhere. Crow spokeswoman Rebecca Drago said the congressman planned to reintroduce the bill in the House next week at the latest.
“The system doesn’t have the resources at this point to test folks and to treat them — so let’s stop transferring people between facilities,” Crow told The Post.
But Drago acknowledged Tuesday that the current language in the bill wouldn’t specifically halt transfers from Customs and Border Patrol facilities to ICE facilities, adding, “that is something we are looking into.”
The ICE facility in Aurora has been the site of several smaller COVID-19 outbreaks since March 2020. According to a weekly report issued by Crow’s office, there have been 314 positive cases at the facility since the start of the pandemic: 187 among detainees and 128 among staff. According to April’s report from Crow, there were 459 detainees in the facility, which can hold 1,532 people.
Tri-County Health Department does the testing for the ICE facility. Dr. Bernadette Albanese, medical epidemiologist at the agency, said her staff remains “nimble and responsive” to new detainee arrivals.
“The primary goal of the disease control measures implemented at the facility is to mitigate the impact of the new positive detainees admitted to the facility and reduce the risk of further transmission,” she said.
A spokesman for the GEO Group, the private contractor that operates the Aurora facility, said the company “plays no role in decisions related to the assignment, transfer or release of individuals at ICE Processing Centers.”
“There is no provision in our contract that mandates a specific or minimum number of individuals to be assigned to the Aurora ICE Processing Center or any of the ICE Processing Centers we manage on behalf of the federal government,” GEO spokesman Christopher Ferreira wrote in an email.
Coffman said bringing infected detainees to Aurora endangers the community at large and “puts the lives of all of the detainees in this facility unnecessarily at risk.”