LETTERS FROM INSIDE DETAIL DANGERS
The Otay Mesa Detention Center (OMDC) in San Diego County has the highest number of active coronavirus cases out of all migrant detention facilities in the United States — 202 at last count — and now one person in custody has died from the disease caused by the virus. If nothing is done to release detainees, more people will needlessly die.
The majority inside the detention center are being detained awaiting immigration hearings; many are refugees and asylum seekers held in prison because they cannot afford to pay bond to get out as they await hearing. Most of these individuals have fled their countries of origin because of death threats, political persecution, gang violence and all other types of calamity.
Some of those detained are also people who were living unauthorized in the United States, contributing to this country in the many ways we now know are vital to the survival of our society, as farmworkers, grocery store clerks, nursing home workers, health aides and other underpaid, essential labor.
They are now confined to small dorms called pods and are often detained for years, with no freedom and little recourse to systemic abuse of their human rights.
And now the novel coronavirus and the disease it causes, COVID-19, is threatening their lives: the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, the Department of Homeland
Security (DHS) and Corecivic, a forprofit corporation, have not been following basic Centers for Disease
Control procedures for keeping detainees safe, including providing protective masks, soap and hand sanitizer. Despite their assurances that they are, we have received word from inside the facility that standards set by public health experts are not being followed.
The grassroots organization Allies to End Detention has been writing and receiving letters from detained migrants inside the center since 2018, and in the last few weeks the letters have become desperate.
Here is what individuals inside the detention center are telling us in their letters:
“They have confined us to our cells. We can’t leave, not even to eat, because there are people infected with coronavirus. They aren’t complying with giving us what we need to protect ourselves. In the infirmary they aren’t attending to us properly, they just give us water with salt when we get sick and they aren’t telling us when people get sick, they just change our cells. We have to do something to get out of here.”
“Help us get this news to the media and social networks and other organizations. We are in a hunger strike. In the last few days, folks from other pods have joined our strike. We are fighting for humanitarian release and we won’t eat until we get a positive response from ICE, DHS or the migration courts. There are not medical provisions to attend to the sick. There are people here who are already sick with pre-existing conditions.”
“I have epilepsy and asthma. Please help us. We have not committed any crimes and we are afraid of losing our lives for different situations in our home countries. We aren’t eating. [Detention center] officials have cut off all communication and they’ve thrown us into solitary confinement, but we will remain strong, standing, until they respond to our demands.”
The assistant director of ICE field operations has sent a memo requesting a review for release of pregnant detainees, people who gave birth within the past two weeks, people over the age of 60 and people with compromised immune systems.
However, we do not know if this review has been completed, how many people were found eligible, or when individuals will be released. ICE has only released a fraction (150 out of 550 people) of those who were found to meet earlier vulnerability criteria in March. Further, the Los Angeles Times reports that ICE is keeping exposed detainees in a “cohort,” quarantined as a group of 120 individuals, until everyone is symptom-free for 14 days.
This is a highly dangerous solution which will expose even more people, since the 14-day clock starts anew each time another person falls ill within the cohort. It is unclear when and if ICE will release cohorts who have been exposed, even if they meet criteria of vulnerability.
ICE field directors have the power to unilaterally release everyone in custody right now, starting with those who are most vulnerable to serious complications and death from COVID-19. The fact that they have not done so yet, putting hundreds of people at risk of illness and risking death, is unconscionable. We want everyone to be safe, including the guards, their families and all who are in detention, suffering needlessly.
There is still time to save lives.
Related pieces
To read other commentaries related to this outbreak, please see Wednesday’s and Friday’s opinion pages or visit uniontrib.com/opinion/commentary later this week. We have solicited other pieces from several detainees, the ACLU, ICE and Corecivic.
is an assistant professor of religious studies and associate director of the center for Latin American studies at San Diego State University and lives in the College Area. is an assistant professor of English and comparative literature at San Diego State University and lives in Talmadge. is an assistant professor in women’s studies at San Diego State University and lives in Normal Heights. Website: alliestoendetention.org