{"id":209882,"date":"2021-06-20T11:00:48","date_gmt":"2021-06-20T11:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/?p=360156"},"modified":"2021-06-20T11:00:48","modified_gmt":"2021-06-20T11:00:48","slug":"recent-covid-19-spike-in-immigration-detention-was-a-problem-of-ices-own-making","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/06\/20\/recent-covid-19-spike-in-immigration-detention-was-a-problem-of-ices-own-making\/","title":{"rendered":"Recent Covid-19 Spike in Immigration Detention Was a Problem of ICE\u2019s Own Making"},"content":{"rendered":"
In May,<\/u> as the number of people detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement began to swell, the number of positive Covid-19 cases shot up dramatically. On May 19, the agency reported over 2,100 cases, a more than sixfold increase from the beginning of March, concentrated in detention facilities in Mississippi and Louisiana.<\/p>\n
As immigrant right advocates have pointed out<\/a>, the increases appear to be connected to ICE\u2019s refusal to systematically provide Covid-19 vaccines to the people in its custody. Even when vaccines are offered by state health departments, The Intercept has found, detained people are not always taking them \u2014 sometimes due to skepticism of medical care in ICE custody and sometimes due to detention officials\u2019 lackadaisical effort to inform people about the vaccine\u2019s availability.<\/p>\n In addition, The Intercept has found that the increase in coronavirus cases coincided with ICE\u2019s decision to transfer detainees through a Mississippi facility where cases were exploding, effectively spreading the virus to various other detention centers in the South \u2014 despite the fact that the agency has previously acknowledged in internal documents that such transfers cause outbreaks<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cTransfers in and of themselves are high risk. Every time you travel by bus, by public transportation, with other people, there’s a high risk of transmission and a high risk of being infected, especially if you’re not tested and you\u2019re asymptomatically infected,\u201d said Dr. Ranit Mishori, a professor at Georgetown University\u00a0School of Medicine and senior medical adviser to Physicians for Human Rights. \u201cIf I were running the ICE medical operation, getting a vaccination program underway would be my absolute top choice.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAs is everything with Covid, there is no one solution,\u201d added Mishori, who recently co-authored a blog post<\/a> with recommendations for vaccination in immigration detention. She pointed to other deficiencies that could be addressed, like the lack of proper testing, the transfers, and the failure to provide for social distancing.<\/p>\n From mid-March to mid-May, as President Joe Biden\u2019s administration began to allow more asylum-seekers into the U.S. the number of people in ICE detention grew from about 14,000 to 20,400, representing about a 45 percent increase. The number of confirmed active Covid-19 cases over the same period went from about 475 to 2,100, about a 340 percent increase. The Biden administration continues to expel most asylum-seekers immediately upon their entry into the U.S. under an obscure public health rule called Title 42<\/a>; those who make it through are screened for infection. ICE does not report infections among its staff, but there have long been indications that staff bring the virus into detention centers<\/a>, not the other way around.<\/p>\n The loci of the outbreaks were in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arizona, where ICE has a robust detention infrastructure. The spread can also be tied to lagging vaccination rates as a whole<\/a>. Louisiana ranks 48th out of 51 states, including Washington, D.C., while Mississippi is dead last, with about 28 percent of its adult population fully vaccinated.<\/p>\n