Groups Sue ICE On Behalf Of HoCo Detainees Due To Coronavirus

MARYLAND, MD — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been sued by several organizations on behalf of immigrants detained in the Howard County Detention Center in Maryland and Worcester County Detention Center out of concern for their health during the new coronavirus pandemic.

The National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild, the Capital Area Immigrants’ Rights Coalition, the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Maryland want the people who are in civil detention and who are at high risk for serious illness or death in the event of infection from the new coronavirus due to age or an underlying medical conditions to be released.

ICE officers have tested positive for coronavirus in detention facilities in New Jersey and Texas, and the Worcester County Detention Center in Maryland is currently under quarantine because of COVID-19 exposure.

According to the organizations, people detained in immigrant detention are at a particularly high risk of contracting the virus due to conditions that are sometimes overcrowded and unsanitary.

“ICE’s needless detention of immigrants has always been cruel and excessive, but today, it also recklessly endangers their lives. The government is aware of the risk and yet has refused to release those who are detained, despite the virtual consensus among public health experts — including those working for the department of homeland security — that release is necessary under current circumstances. Keeping high-risk individuals detained under these circumstances is nothing short of a death sentence," said Sirine Shebaya, executive director of NIPNLG, in a statement.

Adina Appelbaum, program director of the Immigration Impact Lab at CAIR Coalition, said that being released is a "matter of life or death" for those who are detained at a high risk for the new coronavirus.

"Being detained during an epidemic that threatens their lives violates our clients’ basic constitutional right to be free from punitive conditions of confinement. These medically vulnerable individuals need to be released to the shelter and safety of their families in Maryland, right now, before it is too late," said Appelbaum.

Maryland is one of five states where the ACLU is suing ICE: Washington, Pennsylvania, California and Massachusetts. The lawsuit in Maryland was filed March 24 and more lawsuits are expected across the country.

“We are filing suits like this nationwide in an urgent effort to save the lives of immigrants who are most vulnerable to this virus. ICE officials have already started to test positive for COVID-19. Public health officials continue to advise that detention centers — as well as jails, prisons and other similar facilities — must dramatically reduce their population and density for the safety of detained people, staff who work in these facilities and the communities they live in. ICE will bear the ultimate responsibility for a humanitarian tragedy if it does not act now," said Eunice Cho, senior staff attorney at the ACLU’s National Prison Project.

Read more:

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