Detained immigrants plead for masks, protection from virus
Associated PressHOUSTON — Elsy was on the phone in an immigration detention center when guards showed up with face masks and forms to sign. But the guards would not give out the masks until the detainees signed the forms, which said they could not hold the private prison company running the detention center in San Diego liable if they got the coronavirus, according to Elsy and two other detainees, including one who read the form to The Associated Press over the phone. “Immigrant detainees do not need to be in a detention center in order to be monitored by ICE,” said Margaret Cargioli, managing attorney at the Immigrant Defenders Law Center. “This pandemic can only be adequately managed if everyone is healthy and everyone is in a safe environment.” Andrew Arthur of the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors restricting immigration, argued that detainees have constant access to medical care and that ICE and prison companies have an interest in limiting the spread of the virus because “they want to continue that business of detention.” A central problem is access to protective equipment, which even medical workers have struggled to get. “The officers have masks and we don’t,” a woman detained at the Montgomery Processing Center north of Houston said in a video posted by the advocacy group RAICES Action.
History of this topic
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