{"id":22808,"date":"2020-04-14T15:28:56","date_gmt":"2020-04-14T19:28:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/?p=22808"},"modified":"2020-04-14T20:59:03","modified_gmt":"2020-04-15T00:59:03","slug":"ice-detention-covid-19-fears-immigrationreform-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/2020\/04\/14\/ice-detention-covid-19-fears-immigrationreform-com\/","title":{"rendered":"Quarantine: Good for Americans, Good for Detained Aliens"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

CBS News<\/a> recently published excerpts of interviews with female detained aliens, arguing that continued confinement puts their lives at risk. The piece opens with this assertion, \u201cLike many of the roughly 34,000 immigrants currently held by ICE [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement], the women feel powerless to protect themselves from the deadly contagion, which has already infected at least 72 detainees and 19 employees in more than two dozen facilities across 11 states.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apparently, CBS is as woefully ignorant<\/a> of basic math as it is about U.S. immigration law. Any fifth grader could tell you that those numbers indicate the following: In the 11 states referenced, roughly 8 people in a detention setting have become infected with Novel Coronavirus.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is clearly a\ncause for concern. No decent human being wishes to see anyone infected with a\npotentially lethal virus, even lawbreakers. But is it a legitimate reason to go\nreleasing people who have defied our immigration laws, especially when we know\nthat they are likely to disappear, never to be seen again? To answer that\nquestion using statistics as a guide, we need more data. And CBS didn\u2019t bother\nto provide any of that information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the inclusion of those omitted facts, let\u2019s take a look at CBS<\/em>\u2019s assertions in context. As CBS points out there are roughly 34,000 detainees in ICE custody at present. In addition, there are approximately 6,100<\/a> ICE enforcement and removal officers. (Not all of those officers work in a detention setting. However, all of them go in and out of detention centers to process and transport immigration violators.) There are also an unknown number of U.S. Marshals Service and U.S. Public Health Service officials who regularly interact with immigration detainees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ICE doesn\u2019t\npublish statistics on the number of staff employed by state and local detention\nfacilities with which it has contracts. Nor does it publish data regarding\nstaffing levels at the private detention centers it uses. However, let\u2019s\nassume, for the sake of argument, that combined state\/local\/private staffing is\nequal to ICE\u2019s and sits at around 6,100 people. (In reality, it may be larger\nthan ICE\u2019s detention workforce). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That would mean there are roughly 46,000 people in the potential COVID-19 infection cohort that revolves around ICE detention. If there are currently 91 infections, the infection rate is roughly 0.2 percent of ICE\u2019s detention-focused population (detainees and detention staff). The infection rate for the general population is \u2013 you guessed it \u2013 roughly 0.2 percent. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Far from being the deathtrap that CBS has represented, being in a detained environment \u2013 which is, in essence, a form of quarantine \u2013 exposes detainees to exactly the same risk being experienced by everyone else in the United States. So, the answer to the question posed above is: No, the COVID-19 outbreak is not a valid reason to release immigration violators, especially when we know they are likely to disappear, never to be seen again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CBS also overlooked another pertinent fact. Everyone\nbeing detained by ICE has an easy way out of the lockup. They can ask to be\nsent home. Immigration detention is civil. Nobody in ICE custody is serving a\npunitive sentence. The purpose of immigration detention is to ensure an alien\u2019s\npresence at an immigration hearing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The vast majority of foreign nationals locked up by\nICE unnecessarily prolong their own detention by pursuing baseless claims to\nrelief from removal. If those claims are dropped, and an immigration violator\nadmits that he\/she has broken our laws, then release from detention becomes a\nfairly rapid process. Did you notice that no one interviewed by CBS<\/em> asked\nto be sent home? Instead, they are all demanding release in the United\nStates<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With enough information to understand what\u2019s really going on, CBS\u2019s tearjerker interviews with foreign law-breakers seem to be a complete sham. Rather than a science-based effort to ensure that detainees are treated humanely, they are a cynical, calculated\u00a0effort to exploit<\/a> a public health crisis in order to further an open borders agenda.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CBS News recently published excerpts of interviews with female detained aliens, arguing that continued confinement puts their lives at risk. The piece opens with this assertion, \u201cLike many of the roughly 34,000 immigrants currently held by ICE [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement], the women feel powerless to protect themselves from the deadly contagion, which has<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":52,"featured_media":12091,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[5],"tags":[8012,1242,1524,1349],"yst_prominent_words":[8336,8337,8231,2118,2509,1918,4792,1963,6948,5167,8335,2968,8052,8334,8342],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22808"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/52"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22808"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22808\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22813,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22808\/revisions\/22813"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22808"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=22808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}