Though federal immigration detention facilities across the country have tested only a small portion of their 30,000 detainees, nearly 900 have been found to be positive for the coronavirus.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement reported that 869 detainees of the 1,686 who have undergone tests were infected. The hundreds of sick detainees stretch across 40 ICE facilities, which include local jails, ICE-run facilities, and private prisons.
Detainees are taken into custody either at the border and transferred to ICE to face legal proceedings for deportation or arrested within the United States for being in the country without permission.
The largest outbreak is at the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego, California, where 144 people have the coronavirus. The Bluebonnet Detention Facility in Anson, Texas, has the second-highest number of confirmed cases: 72. Sixty-four detainees at the Richwood Correctional Center in Monroe, Louisiana, and 53 detainees at the La Palma Correctional Facility in Eloy, Arizona, have the virus. Forty-two ICE employees at detention centers have tested positive.
As of April 25, ICE reported 29,675 detainees in its custody.
A number of immigrant advocates have sued ICE over the past two months in an effort to get vulnerable populations, such as people with preexisting conditions and the elderly, out of detention facilities. ICE does not determine if someone gets released. Instead, the federal immigration court system within the Department of Justice decides cases. Last week, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overruled a lower court’s decision to shrink the number of people held at a Los Angeles facility.
It is not clear how many ICE detainees have been released due to the coronavirus. Democrats have made frequent calls since March for widescale releases.
In late March, ICE said it would temporarily scale back its operations due to the pandemic and instead prioritize arresting people who are residing in the U.S. without permission and deemed “public safety risks” or who have a serious criminal record. The latter are legally barred from being released once in custody.
It is not clear how significantly the scaling back of arrests will affect the number of people taken into custody. In fiscal 2019, ICE arrested approximately 143,000 people within the country.
