Top House Democrats Tuesday called on the Department of Homeland Security to release illegal immigrants to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney and Rep. Jamie Raskin wrote to DHS acting Secretary Chad Wolf, asking him to immediately release nonviolent detainees.
Maloney and Raskin said the detention facilities that house the illegal immigrants are not equipped to deal with a coronavirus outbreak. The two lawmakers said 19 detained illegal immigrants and seven immigration enforcement officers have tested positive for the coronavirus at six Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities.
The detention centers lack adequate medical staff or equipment to treat an outbreak, the lawmakers said.
About 40,000 illegal immigrants are held in detention daily at more than a dozen ICE facilities.
“Releasing these non-violent detainees will prevent the unnecessary infection, sickness, and death of the men and women who work in these facilities and those who are detained,” Raskin, of Maryland, and Maloney, of New York, wrote to Wolf.
The two wrote to Wolf that former ICE Director John Sandweg has called for the release of nonviolent detainees, “stressing that an outbreak in a detention facility poses a severe danger both to detainees and the communities where detention facilities are located.”
Human rights and civil rights groups, including Amnesty International and the ACLU, have called for the detainees to be released.
