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02 May 2020 – United States

2 May 2020

During the week of 27 April 2020, two ICE guards in a Louisiana detention centre died after contracting Covid-19. Relatives reported that they believed both men had contracted the virus while working at Richwood Correctional Centre in Monroe. In addition, reports indicate that although 45 detainees had tested positive for the virus, guards were allegedly barred from wearing masks. Across the United States, 449 detainees and 36 guards had contracted the virus by the end of April, according to data released by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement website.

ICE has not yet recorded any deaths in its facilities. Of the 30,000 people detained across their facilities however, only 1,000 have been tested for Covid-19. Associated Press reported that ICE will be receiving 2,000 tests a month from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to ramp up its testing.

Advocates are concerned that with hunger strikes emerging in some facilities and detainees with health conditions still being held, “it may only be a matter of time before detainees add to the pandemic’s rising national death toll.”

The pandemic has also struck the U.S. prison system. In Marion prison in Ohio, more than 1,800 prisoners and 109 prison staff tested positive for Covid on. In a California prison, a prisoner died.

Meanwhile, news reports have revealed how officials in the White House have capitalized on the crisis to implement a long-sought wish list of extreme anti-immigration measures, misleadingly arguing, as one administration official was quoted in the New York Times as saying: “This is not about immigration. What’s transpiring right now is purely about infectious disease and public health.”

A key official behind this effort has been Stephen Miller, an adviser to President Donald Trump. Reports the New York Times: “From the early days of the Trump administration, Stephen Miller, the president’s chief adviser on immigration, has repeatedly tried to use an obscure law designed to protect the nation from diseases overseas as a way to tighten the borders. The question was, which disease? Mr. Miller pushed for invoking the president’s broad public health powers in 2019, when an outbreak of mumps spread through immigration detention facilities in six states. He tried again that year when Border Patrol stations were hit with the flu. When vast caravans of migrants surged toward the border in 2018, Mr. Miller looked for evidence that they carried illnesses. He asked for updates on American communities that received migrants to see if new disease was spreading there. In 2018, dozens of migrants became seriously ill in federal custody, and two under the age of 10 died within three weeks of each other. While many viewed the incidents as resulting from negligence on the part of the border authorities, Mr. Miller instead argued that they supported his argument that President Trump should use his public health powers to justify sealing the borders. On some occasions, Mr. Miller and the president, who also embraced these ideas, were talked down by cabinet secretaries and lawyers who argued that the public health situation at the time did not provide sufficient legal basis for such a proclamation. That changed with the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic.

“Within days of the confirmation of the first case in the United States, the White House shut American land borders to nonessential travel, closing the door to almost all migrants, including children and teenagers who arrived at the border with no parent or other adult guardian. Other international travel restrictions were introduced, as well as a pause on green card processing at American consular offices, which Mr. Miller told conservative allies in a recent private phone call was only the first step in a broader plan to restrict legal immigration. But what has been billed by the White House as an urgent response to the coronavirus pandemic was in large part repurposed from old draft executive orders and policy discussions that have taken place repeatedly since Mr. Trump took office and have now gained new legitimacy, three former officials who were involved in the earlier deliberations said. One official said the ideas about invoking public health and other emergency powers had been on a “wish list” of about 50 ideas to curtail immigration that Mr. Miller crafted within the first six months of the administration.”