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Law360 (April 7, 2020, 8:12 PM EDT) -- The U.S. Department of Homeland Security should release nonviolent detainees, especially those who have preexisting medical conditions, to help prevent the coronavirus from spreading through immigration detention centers, two Democratic House leaders said in a letter Tuesday.
In the letter addressed to DHS and its agencies, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, House Oversight Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., and Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Subcommittee Chairman Jamie Raskin, D-Md., said the fact the agencies don't have a plan for limiting the spread of COVID-19 raises concerns that detainees' lives are in jeopardy if they remain in detention centers.
The agencies need to reduce the number of immigrants in its detention centers to fight the spread of the novel virus that has already been contracted by 19 detainees and seven staff members at six ICE facilities across the U.S., the House leaders said.
"If an outbreak spreads from a facility into the community, it will exacerbate the strain on local hospitals since many detention centers are in rural areas with very little medical infrastructure," they said.
The two House Democrats initially asked DHS in March to provide them with its plan for protecting detainees from the coronavirus, according to the letter. But the agency failed to supply them with all the information they requested, adding to their concerns about the safety of immigrants in detention centers, the letter said.
The House leaders said the coronavirus measures that DHS has taken are insufficient and go against the medical advice provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Even though the CDC has recommended that individuals who come in contact with someone who tests positive should not be "cohorted," ICE officials have indicated that they use the practice, the Democrats said.
Attorneys told Law360 in March that they are concerned ICE is not prepared to handle a potential outbreak of the virus at the agency's detention centers, where immigrants are trapped in communal spaces.
Advocacy groups including the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project and the American Civil Liberties Union have expressed similar concerns in recent lawsuits filed in Washington, Louisiana, New York, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania asking for detainees who are older or have preexisting medical conditions to be released.
The lawsuits have had mixed results, according to court rulings. In Washington and Louisiana, federal judges refused to order ICE to release those qualified detainees, but federal judges in New York, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts instructed that a total of 27 detainees be let go.
DHS did not respond to a request for comment.
--Editing by Orlando Lorenzo.
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