ICE’s deadly indifference puts us all in danger | Editorial


How can ICE let out only a few, when this virus will claim so many? (AP Photo | Steve Helber)

To give our hospitals a fighting chance against this pandemic, we are all upending our lives to stay home as much as possible and avoid close contact.

Yet at the same time, our government is crowding hundreds of immigrants arrested in President Trump’s indiscriminate sweeps into big rooms in New Jersey’s jails, a feeding ground for the virus – and a potential death trap. It defies logic.

Think this won’t affect the rest of us? Think again.

The virus will be carried by a guard or two into our jails, where it will inevitably spread wildly in close quarters. Detainees and staffers will get sick first, then infect their families, and all of ours.

When inmates fall ill, they will be sent to overwhelmed emergency rooms in places like Newark.

Two doctors from the Department of Homeland Security just warned Congress of a “tinderbox scenario,” if we don’t release the immigrants before the virus tears through, and they “fill up and overwhelm the ventilator resources.”

By the time the rest of us get sick, will any beds or ventilators be left? Will we even have enough healthy corrections officers to guard the most dangerous criminals?

This much is certain: Lives will be lost.

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And we all know that President Trump will not act, which means the best hope is that Gov. Phil Murphy will step into that vacuum.

He’s closed daycares, schools and banned public gatherings statewide. So why allow hundreds of immigrants to live in exactly the close quarters this virus thrives in?

Drug users and petty burglars are already being released from our jails, because Murphy’s Attorney General understands that public health is at stake. Yet the immigrants detained not as punishment, but solely to ensure that they show up for court, are not. What sense does that make?

Only a few have been let out in New Jersey by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, on the most exceptional basis – even though the majority of detainees have no history of criminal violence. We can ensure they show up in court by using alternatives like ankle bracelets, which have worked elsewhere.

How can Murphy help, given that ICE is a federal agency? Citing the power of state government to enforce building capacity rules, Physicians for Human Rights, Human Rights First and Amnesty International USA just called on him and other governors to crack down immediately, in a joint letter. Their actions may be challenged, but given the high stakes, it is worth a try.

We got no response from Murphy’s office this week. But our hope is he steps up and demands action, along with county officials like Joseph DiVincenzo, who oversees Essex County jail. This is about life and death. It’s time to go all-out.

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Patrick Colligan, head of the union that represents jail corrections officers, has already called to safely reduce the detained population, however we can. “We’re under a state of emergency, so it’s sound policy,” he said. “We want to protect our officers in the jail, obviously.”

Which brings us to John Tsoukaris, the head of ICE’s Newark office. The man with the discretion to release the immigrants in New Jersey.

What does he say to these officers, their families, and all the rest of us being put in greater danger because he won’t take the same preventative step as the state, and release nonviolent detainees?

What does he say to the immigrants who will inevitably fall sick and die, to their kids and loved ones, many of whom are U.S. citizens?

He ignored all our questions. In response to more than 40 advocacy groups, he wrote Thursday that ICE has “prudently released several detainees on forms of supervision” because of their age or medical conditions.

Several? Why not all the rest?

The former head of ICE, John Sandweg, argued in the Atlantic that we must release all nonviolent detainees, “the only way to protect detention facilities and the people in them from COVID-19.”

More than 3,000 physicians have signed a letter urging ICE to release detainees while their legal cases proceed, especially the most vulnerable. “They’re just stuck there like sitting ducks,” one said.

That’s how it feels to Nicolas Morales, who called us from the Elizabeth detention center on Thursday to say he just spent several days in isolation as punishment for leading a hunger strike.

“They said no more people were coming in, but they’re still bringing in people,” he said. “Right now, I’m in a 44-person room. There is no protection. There is poor sanitation in here. This place, it’s like a warehouse. My fear is that we’re going to get infected with the virus.”

Cesar Giovani Urvina-Gallegos, 60 years old and medically fragile with high cholesterol, a known risk factor, remains in Essex County jail, despite a desperate plea for release by his lawyer with the Rutgers Immigrant Rights Clinic.

So does a client of Lauren Major with American Friends Service Committee, who implored ICE last week to release the man in his 50′s with high blood pressure, diabetes and early signs of heart trouble, before he complained of a sore throat and a fever on Thursday. She also got no answer.

“Detainees are super scared, and collecting their own lists of people,” she told us – those with asthma, high blood pressure, diabetes. “A lot of our clients are calling, saying they are afraid they’re going to die in this facility.”

And Trump won’t be the only one who is remembered for his inaction, if they do.

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