National Immigration Reporter, Reuters
Mica writes:
I wanted to share our latest reporting, which found about a third of the 43,000 immigrants in detention as of March 2 were housed at facilities that have only one hospital – or none – with intensive-care beds within 25 miles, according to an analysis of data from the American Hospital Directory and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The seven sites with no such hospitals nearby held a total of about 5,000 detainees, according to the analysis, which examined centers that averaged 100 or more detainees. (ICE has said there are fewer detainees being held currently – around 35,600 – but did not provide a facility-by-facility breakdown of their whereabouts)
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-detention-insi-idUSKBN21L1E4
We focused on Louisiana where the number of immigrant detainees has quadrupled under Trump to nearly 7,000 as of March 2 data. Many of the detention centers in the state are in tiny, rural towns. The Catahoula Correctional Center for example houses more than 500 detainees. It is just outside of Harrisonburg, LA, population 330.
Nurses, doctors and hospital administrators at the small hospitals closest to the detention centers – and even at larger facilities farther away – said they would be overwhelmed if there is an outbreak inside one of the facilities.
Public health experts said an outbreak in a population of 1,500 detainees could require between 150 and 175 intensive-care admissions.
We previously have reported on how lawyers are seeking parole for vulnerable immigrant detainees and how the city of Matamoros in Mexico, where thousands of migrants are stuck in limbo in tent camps, is unprepared for an outbreak.
Please read and share and contact me with additional tips for us to follow!
………………………………………………….
Mica Rosenberg
Reuters News
National Immigration Reporter
**************************
The whole idea of locating immigration prisons “in the middle of nowhere” intentionally to hamper representation, coerce, punish, and deter detainees from asserting legal rights, and limit accountability and public oversight has been a grotesque denial of due process from the “git go.” Congress and the Article III Courts should have intervened long ago to put a stop to this nonsense before it became life-threatening on an even larger scale.
Even more preposterous is that the DOJ and EOIR have located so-called “courts” (that aren’t really courts in any sense of the term, and which no longer provide any semblance of due process and fundamental fairness) within the Gulag. It’s more like the Spanish Inquisition than it is 21st Century American Justice. Except the tragedy is that this is what passes for justice in 21st Century America! What has happened to our country and our souls? Sadly, it’s actually possible that those appearing before the Spanish Inquisition were treated better than we treat asylum seekers under the Trump regime.
Even worse, the “perpetrators” of this disgraceful mockery of the law and human dignity have to date gotten away Scot-Free. Our justice system at all levels has failed migrants seeking fair and humane treatment under our laws. (Apparently, threatening the lives, rights, and safety of non-criminal so-called “civil detainees” isn’t a problem for either Congress or the Article IIIs. We already know that Trump considers our Constitution to be a joke, and that he therefore runs over it with regularity, contempt, and impunity, while Roberts and his Supremes’ majority express disinterest in holding the Trump regime accountable for even the most boldly egregious abuses. No wonder his open contempt for the Article IIIs has only grown over the past three years.)
Thanks, Mica, for your courageous reporting and continuing to tell the story of those whose lives are being endangered by a “maliciously incompetent” White Nationalist regime and feckless Federal Courts, many of whom have forgotten the meaning of their oaths of office and their obligations to their fellow human beings.
Read all of Mica’s stories in their entirety at the above links. Or, better yet, contact Mica directly@Reuters with your own “horror stories” from inside Trump’s judicially-enabled New American Gulag.
Due Process Forever! The Trump Regime & The Complicit Congress & Federal Courts That Enable Its Abuses, Never!
Vote Like Your Life Depends On It This November! Because, It Does!
PWS
04-04-20