The DHS Inspector General released a report on ICE's response to COVID19. It praises ICE for providing "adequate supplies of PPE" but observed instances where "staff and detainees did not consistently wear face masks, socially distance, manage medical sick calls, regularly communicate with detainees regarding their COVID19 test results" and that "testing of both detainees and staff was insufficient, and ICE headquarters did not provide effective oversight."

Four people so far have died at SDC due to COVID:

Cipriano Chavez-Alvarez, 61

Jose Guillen-Vega, 70

Santiago Baten-Oxlaj, 34

Pedro Arriago-Santoya, 44

A report released the day before Biden took office noted that "the increase in case rates among people detained by ICE has outpaced the growth in the US population." The report also noted that "[their] analysis depends on ICE reporting; thus, cases may actually be higher."

ICE has been roundly and consistently criticized for their role in spreading COVID19 amongst detained immigrants. Public health experts, physician groups, human rights advocates, and thinkthanks have recommended releasing all detained immigrants in order to prevent further "tinderbox" events.

Praying for Hand Soap and Masks

"The findings of this report show that in many detention centers, social distancing was impossible and was not provided for people who were high risk, detainees often went without hand soap, surfaces were not adequately disinfected, and testing was often not available even for people who reported symptoms, while long delays were reported in accessing medical treatment. Troublingly, many said that the government retaliated and silenced them when they protested these harsh conditions.

As an urgent matter, the U.S. government should release all people from immigration detention to allow them to safely shelter in the community, absent a substantiated individual determination that the person represents a public security risk."

Fear, Illness and Death in ICE Detention: How a Protest Grew on the Inside

"The agency’s reluctance to release detainees seems to stem less from any public threats posed by the people it detains than from an existential sort of anxiety about its own future. In response to one federal lawsuit filed on March 26 in California on behalf of two detained men, ICE lawyers wrote, “The disruptive effect of ordering petitioners released on this slim, hypothetical basis would long survive the Covid-19 pandemic, and the precedent would serve to release many aliens eligible for removal back into the general public.

John Sandweg served during the Obama administration as the D.H.S.’s acting general counsel and as ICE’s interim director. To immigrant-rights advocates, Sandweg, who is now in private practice, was a target of aggressive campaigns to fight Obama-era detention policies. While he was at ICE, the agency detained what were then historically high numbers of people. But during his seven months as the organization’s director, Sandweg says now, he began to question the need for mass detention. Now, during the pandemic, Sandweg has been calling on the agency, in op-eds and in statements with human rights groups, to release a majority of detainees."

Cage Of Fear: Medical Neglect And Abuse In Stewart Detention Center During The Covid-19 Pandemic

"In March and April 2020, the first months of wide Covid-19 spread in the United States, El Refugio’s and Freedom for Immigrant’s detention hotlines received an unprecedented number of calls. Those detained at SDC reported overcrowded conditions, the inability to follow social distancing guidelines, extremely limited access to personal protective equipment, and fear of becoming infected. Hotline volunteers logged call after call reporting that SDC staff did not isolate newly admitted individuals, those with symptoms, or people with close contact to positive Covid-19 cases. High risk individuals were held in units with as many as seventy and eighty others. Detained individuals shared their fear of being sent to “el pozo,” or the hole; medical isolation was indistinguishable from solitary confinement. Then letters began to arrive to El Refugio documenting the same kinds of conditions and reinforcing patterns of fear, anxiety, and the worry that detained individuals would not make it out of SDC alive. These reports have continued into 2021."

content warning: suicide, disturbing images

There have been at least four additional deaths at SDC, including two by suicide while inside of solitary confinement:

ICE and Isolation: A Portrait of Torture in Immigration Detention

"The detainee, a 40-year-old undocumented Mexican migrant, [Efraín Romero de la Rosa] killed himself after spending 21 days in solitary confinement in July 2018.

Confined to a 13-by-7-foot concrete cell for 23 hours a day, Romero — who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia — spent his final days battling the voices in his head. Nearing the end of his 21st day in in solitary, Romero killed himself in the tiny cell."

Investigation finds ICE detention center cut corners and skirted federal detention rules

"Sometime after midnight in mid-May of 2017, 27-year-old JeanCarlo Jimenez Joseph fashioned a noose from a bed sheet and hanged himself in his solitary confinement cell. The probe disclosed that Jimenez repeatedly displayed suicidal behavior, but never got the mental health care he needed. He was also placed in a cell that contained a known suicide hazard, a ceiling sprinkler head, upon which he affixed his makeshift noose.

Freddy Wims was assigned to check Jimenez’s cell every half hour, but didn’t do so. Instead, he falsified his logs to make it appear he had, and he was later fired. Stewart’s warden, Bill Spivey, retired after Jimenez’s death; a CoreCivic spokesman told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the two events were unrelated. Spivey couldn’t be reached for comment for this article."

There have been many deaths at detention centers, which the American Immigration Lawyers Association tracks here.

As always, there are numerous ways of getting involved in immigration advocacy work:

Become a member of Project South, a staple of human rights advocacy in the Southeast US

Donate to El Refugio which provides support for immigrants detained at SDC and housing for their families in Lumpkin, GA, where SDC is located

Donate to Georgia Latino Alliance of Human Rights (GLAHR), a grassroots, on-the-ground advocacy group based in Atlanta who show up to every protest in solidarity and who provide support to undocumented folks

Donate to the Black Alliance for Just Immigration, a group that advocates for and supports the oft-forgotten community of Black immigrants

Signup to be a member of Detention Watch, a national organization made up of many local chapters that have been in the immigration advocacy space since 1997.

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