Welcome to this week’s edition of IMM Print Weekly, a newsletter that showcases the stories of detained immigrants and their allies.
We seek to shine a light on how immigrant prisons and jails impact human beings and communities, celebrate the work of those advocating for detention abolition, and provide resources on how to get involved.
In this week’s edition: immigrants in a Louisiana ICE prison plead for release and Freedom for Immigrants releases a biweekly update of our COVID-19 Hotline data.
Freedom for Immigrants is continuing to raise money for our National Bond Fund. Since we launched our bond fund, we have bonded out over 260 people, paying over $1.6 million. If any of the stories we’ve published in IMM Print have moved you, please consider donating here.
"We haven't the sanitizer-hygienic conditions needed if the Virus would get into the Center..."
On April 13th, The Intercept published a scathing article about the COVID-19 crisis and ICE's scrambled, uncoordinated, arbitrary, and cruel response to it. The article article contains a letter from men detained at the Richwood Correctional Center in LaSalle, LA. In it, they describe the deplorable conditions they find themselves in.
“…we are every day exposed because ICE and detention officers [go] in and out from the center with only temperature checking, and its known that the Virus is contagious even with no symptoms.”
Read their letter here.
Freedom for Immigrants Launches Bi-Weekly Report on COVID-19 in ICE Custody
To keep track of all the media reports, publicly available databases, individual reporting through survey responses and Freedom for Immigrants’ National Detention Hotline, we will provide a new bi-weekly analysis and update on COVID-19 in ICE custody.
The information in the first report was collected between March 23 and April 14, and paints a highly distressing picture of how the deadly COVID-19 is impacting those in detention. Fearing for their lives, they've launched hunger strikes, written letters, shared videos and initiated protests. Meantime, ICE has fumbled and dissembled in its response to the virus, demonstrating an astonishing callousness and disregard toward this vulnerable population.
Here is a sampling of what we’ve found:
On April 3, an advocate reported that officials at the La Palma Correctional Center in Eloy, AZ had not informed immigrants in custody about positive cases of COVID-19 at that facility, leaving immigrants inside to learn about these cases through family members or the news.
According to an April 10th press report, women detained at Otay Mesa were informed that they needed to sign liability waivers as a condition of accepting free masks. According to press reports, when the women refused to sign, ICE pepper-sprayed them. Women were ultimately given the facemasks without being forced to sign an additional waiver.
An advocate in regular contact with family members of a person detained in Montgomery Processing Center in Conroe, TX reported that facility staff gave the detained person Tylenol and Mucinex after the person reported feeling symptons consistent with COVID-19, including cough and fatigue. The detained person also has a history of cardiovascular disease and uses an an inhaler. Despite the person's clear medical vulnerability to COVID-19, ICE has not granted early release or transferred the individual to a hospital.
Read the full update here.
Get involved:
Freedom for Immigrants has launched the COVID-19 Detention Hotline. Please click here to access our toolkit containing information, graphics and printable materials related to our COVID-19 hotline and help us spread the word!
We are excited announce and launch our post release house that supports immigrants as they are bonded out of detention in Louisiana. This is our critical response and we need your support to sustain this incredible resource.
Your gift will provide a warm meal and a safe place to stay while immigrants make their journey to reunite with loved ones.
Donate here.
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