US immigration authorities have spread coronaviruses by detainees being transferred. Mighty 790 KFGO

Mica Rosenberg, Kristina Cooke, Reade Levinson

NEW YORK / LOS ANGELES (Reuters)-Public health experts have warned the US government for months that shuffling detainees in immigration camps exposes them to COVID-19 and helps spread the disease.

The United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement Office (ICE) continues this practice, saying it has taken all necessary precautions.

A review of court records and ICE data by Reuters found the health professional to be correct.

Analysis of data from the Immigration Court showed that hundreds of ICE guards had already tested positive for COVID-19, a disease caused by the new coronavirus, and then between detention centers in April, May, and June. The transfer of 268 detainees has been confirmed.

Half of the transfers confirmed by Reuters included detainees who were transferred from a center with COVID-19 cases to a known center without cases, or from a center without cases to a virus-infected center.

Reuters tally is probably only a small part of every transfer, a former ICE official said. ICE does not publish data on detainee mobility, and court records only record a few of them.

At least one transfer resulted in a super-diffusion event, according to emails from ICE and staff in Detention Centers in Farmville, Virginia, court documents, and interviews with 12 or more detainees at the facility.

Until its relocation, only two detainees were tested positive at the Farmville Center-both immigrants were deported there in late April. They were immediately quarantined, monitored, and the only case known to the facility for more than a month, the court said.

Then, on June 2, ICE relocated 74 detainees from Florida and Arizona, more than half of whom later tested positive for COVID-19. By July 16, farm buildings had become the most heavily detained centers of the virus by July 16, with a total of 315 cases, according to ICE data.

(Figure regarding the occurrence of COVID-19 in farm buildings-https://graphics.reuters.com/HEALTH-CORONAVIRUS/IMMIGRATION-DETENTION/yxmpjlmzqpr/IMMIGRATION-DETENTION-FVILLE.jpg)

“walking Dead”

Selafin Zaragoza, a Mexican detainee at Farmville, said he and another detainee who confirmed Zaragoza’s account with Reuters were in contact with the transferee when they first arrived. His job was to distribute shoes and clothes to new arrivals.

The new group was housed in another dormitory, but about two weeks after they arrived, dozens of other inmates began to get sick, 15 inmates said in an interview. .. Centers for Disease Control states that symptoms of COVID may appear 2 to 14 days after exposure to the virus.

“There were people who had a fever, fainting and the two fell to the floor,” Zaragoza said. “There is one man with a very high fever. He looks like a walking dead.”

Faced with the outbreak, Farmville tested all detainees in the first few days of July. ICE out of 359 detainees tested, 268 were positive, according to an ICE statement on questions from Reuters. The majority were asymptomatic, but said three detainees were hospitalized.

The ICE statement said authorities were committed to the well-being of all detainees and continued several transfers to reduce congestion. ICE did not respond to requests for comment on Reuters’ analysis.

Former ICE officials and immigration lawyers say they regularly transport detainees for a myriad of reasons, including bedspace, immigration preparations for deportation, and security reasons. I will. With the pandemic still raging in the United States, lawmakers called on the ICE to suspend its practice.

Carlos Franco-Paredes, an infectious disease doctor studying the outbreak of COVID-19 in an orthodontic setting, said it is impossible to safely detain detainees in the current setting.

“Especially if you move people out of a pandemic area, you’ll still be in contact with them for two weeks,” said Franco Paredes. “You are basically spreading the problem.”

To limit the spread of COVID-19, the ICE suspended visits to detention centers in mid-March and delayed arrest. Crossing the US-Mexico border has also declined, reducing the overall detention population.

Rising case

Prisons and detention centers have been overly affected by the outbreak of the coronavirus. Poor access to health care, poor ventilation and hygiene, and a large number of people trapped in the neighborhood are all breeding grounds for the virus, according to doctors with infectious diseases.

As of July 16, ICE has reported 3,567 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in detention s. The actual number of infected detainees is almost certainly high, according to Franco Paredes.

Currently, approximately 22,000 detainees are being held in ICE and approximately 13,500 tests have been conducted, including perhaps released migrants.

(Graphics for ICE Custody Case: https://graphics.reuters.com/HEALTH-CORONAVIRUS/IMMIGRATION-DETENTION/dgkplxorzpb/IMMIGRATION-DETENTION-TOTAL.jpg)

Indeed, detainee transfer is not the only way to introduce a virus into a detention center. Employees with the disease are also one of the leading causes of infection, according to public health experts. Nearly 1,000 detention center staff tested positive for the virus.

ICE’s policy is to screen detainees for fever and other symptoms but not for illness before they are transferred. According to the ICE, cases with positive or suspected COVID-19 are isolated from other detainees.

Mass transfer

However, in the case of farm buildings, it shows that efforts to isolate sick and healthy detainees do not necessarily prevent spread.

One week after the transferees out of the state arrived at the Farmville Center, three were virus-positive but were still isolated from the general population. In response, ICE Deputy Executive Director Matthew Munroe e-mailed an immigration lawyer that the center staff decided to test the entire group of freshmen. 51 people were positive.

ICE data show that the day before the transfer, two of the three centers where the detains came were reporting cases. There were 15 confirmed COVID cases at ICE’s Chrome North Service Processing Center in Florida, and one at the Eloy Detention Center in Eloy, Arizona.

A review of immigration court records by Reuters confirmed 195 transfers to and from detention centers where ICE had reported confirmed cases. These include:

-On 6 May, 10 confirmed cases from the Otello County Treatment Center in New Mexico were transferred to the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, WA.

-On 7 May, the Blue Bonnet Detention Center in Anson, Texas, was transferred to Johnson County Jail, Dallas, which had 41 confirmed cases at the time, but had no known cases until 19 May.

-In late May, four transfers from a previously unknown detention center in Glades County, Florida, to Broward Migration Center in Pompano Beach, Florida, where 19 cases were known at the time.

Data from the Immigration Court noted when the government notified the court that a detainee in custody was relocated to another location. Reuters counted transfers only if the data indicated that they were hearing in a new known detention center, prison or prison. The news agency then compared these records to the number of ICE infections in detention centers.

A Mexican detainee in Farmville, Zaragoza lived in the United States for 21 years before being arrested. He has diabetes and hypertension-two conditions that say CDC puts coronavirus patients at a higher risk of falling into serious illness. He said he began to feel sick in late June, but was not as ill as others in his dormitory.

On July 9, he received the bad news. He and almost all men in his dormitory were positive for coronavirus.

(Reports by Mica Rosenberg in New York, Reed Levinson in London, Christina Cook in Los Angeles, edited by Ross Corbin and Janet Roberts.)