Pray for the innocent caged immigrants especially during the coronavirus pandemic

Set them free!

Protect our immigrants from ICE incarceration, and the coronavirus by releasing them from prisons and cages

A ‘feeding ground’ for the pandemic coronavirus: ICE (immigration) must release these people now | Echo Editorial published in the NJ.com a Hoboken New Jersey newspaper.
It was morally cruel and evil when the Trump administration packed our jails with grandpas and pizza guys in its immigration raids, instead of focusing its efforts on dangerous criminals.

Now it may be a death sentence. Imagine how fast a pandemic can spread in an enclosed space like a jail, where hundreds of immigrants are bunked together, dozens in the same big rooms.

It’s “a feeding ground” for the virus. That’s how the American Civil Liberties Union put it, when it filed suit in Washington on Monday against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, demanding it let these people out – like a Jamaican woman with liver disease, or a Salvadoran man confined to a wheelchair with a colostomy bag and catheter.

The Newark office of ICE, headed by John Tsoukaris, should let as many of them as possible out of our jails, too, before they become epicenters of this outbreak. The truth is, ICE doesn’t have a way to safely detain them. It shouldn’t take a lawsuit.

Remember: These people are in civil, not criminal, detention, which is not meant to be punitive. It’s just about ensuring that they show up to court, not that they suffer or die from a deadly virus.

They should be let out with regular check-ins or ankle bracelets, which studies show are highly effective in getting immigrants to show up to court.

Based on what we’re hearing from public health experts, we’ll see an exponential rise in coronavirus cases in a matter of days. Our hospitals will be swamped with thousands more sick people than they are prepared for.

Think about what will happen. Guards, cafeteria workers and other staffers will carry the virus into our jails, then back to their families and all the rest of us, after it inevitably explodes behind bars.

Americans have vacated schools, daycares, bars and restaurants for just this reason- to slow the spread of the coronavirus. We must do the same with our crowded jails for immigrants. 

Stop arresting all but the most serious criminals, and release as many people as humanely possible.

Jails and private detention centers could team up to do their part, too, by halting their intake of immigrants for the duration of the pandemic, as the ACLU of New Jersey has called for.

Yet instead, ICE is marching in the opposite direction, continuing to make arrests and stuff ever more people into our jails. Those that hold immigrants, like Essex County Jail, say this is not their decision – that if they refused new people, ICE wouldn’t release them, but would simply shift them elsewhere, which is no help.

It’s definitely more on ICE than on the counties. When acting ICE director, Matthew Albence was asked at a congressional hearing last week if he’d consider releasing those most at risk, like older people and the medically frail, all he’d say was: “The people that we have in detention are there because they’re public safety threats or flight risks.”

Fine, keep the serious criminals. But the bulk of these people, deemed flight risks by ICE, can be tracked with ankle bracelets or other monitoring and where that’s been tried, the vast majority have shown up in court. This cruelty is pointless and dangerous – to us all.

ICE has the power to let these people out. It doesn’t need to wait for immigration judges. And its assurance that “Currently, there are no detainees in ICE custody with confirmed COVID-19” is downright Orwellian.

Given the scarcity of tests the coronavirus in America, does anyone really believe that ICE is using them on the folks it wants to deport? The only person who’s been tested in a New Jersey detention center, as far as we know, is one staffer in Elizabeth, who suddenly felt ill.   A harbinger of what is to come.