Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro and members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus are calling on the Trump administration to halt deportation flights amid the novel coronavirus pandemic, saying in a statement that “the U.S. practice of deporting and expelling migrants throughout the Latin America and Caribbean region is contributing to the rapid spread of the COVID-19 virus to countries least able to protect people from the deadly virus.”
This Stephen Miller-led administration is unlikely to listen to the plea, but the call from the legislators shines a much-needed light on the intentional recklessness of our nation’s mass deportation policy: “According to recent reports, well over 100 individuals deported to Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Haiti tested positive for COVID-19, portending a calamitous spread of the disease throughout the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) region,” their letter states.
“The spread of COVID-19 has been exacerbated by the U.S. government’s failure to test all people slated to be deported or expelled,” the legislators say. “Since the onset of COVID-19, U.S. immigration authorities have claimed to conduct minimal medical screening, such as taking people’s temperature and watching for obvious symptoms, but have not consistently administered COVID-19 tests. This type of minimal screening is insufficient, as observed by Mexican immigration officers who wondered how individuals with a dry cough, red eyes, and a fever were allowed to board flights.”
BuzzFeed News reported last month that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials didn’t test 72 people before flying them from two northeast facilities that were experiencing outbreaks to a far less impacted facility in Texas. In the two and a half weeks that followed, 21 of those detainees tested positive. BuzzFeed News reported that officials claimed the detainees weren’t tested before being packed onto a plane because they were showing no symptoms, but that’s a lie, because detainees said some were coughing during the flight.
ICE has in fact tested only a fraction of the total number of detained people across the U.S. Per the agency’s own data, only 2,328 out of more than 26,000 people in custody have been tested for COVID-19 as of May 20. But of those tested, 1,163 have come back positive. ICE is failing to test everyone in its custody because it knows the positive rates are devastating. It’s also failing to test everyone because it just doesn’t care. This is a decision that’s become devastating both here in the U.S. and in the nations we’re deporting people to.
“Demonstrating the exponential danger of these deportations and expulsions, at least 44 migrants flown on one flight to Guatemala tested positive for Coronavirus, one individual flown to Mexico appears to have spread the disease to 14 others, and about 24 of 64 migrants tested positive for COVID-19 on a flight to Colombia,” legislators said. “Infected individuals not only face the trauma of battling COVID-19 in a country where treatment may not be immediately accessible, they also may face discrimination and violence from local communities who fear transmission of the disease.”
“We call upon you to halt the deportation and expulsion of individuals,” legislators say. “Further, we urge you to swiftly and safely release individuals into the care of family or friends in order to prevent the spread of COVID-19, preserve regional stability, and save lives.”