A group of 30 immigrants detained at the Golden State Annex Immigration Detention Center (GSA) in California’s Central Valley signed a letter condemning Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the private company GEO that manages the center, for exposing them to covid-19, after an outbreak of the epidemic in its facilities.
This comes after this year they held a hunger strike at both the Golden State Annex Center and the Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center (Mesa Verde) for more than a month in protest of the systematic abuses against immigrants detained in these centers.
In the letter made public, they denounce that instead of protecting their lives, ICE and the GEO Group have put their lives at risk by allowing the spread of the infection.
They point out that the response to their requests has been to suspend visits with family and friends, cancel in-person legal clinics, access legal consultations through video conferencing, delay court hearings and refuse to provide them with antiviral medications such as Paxlovid.
“Golden State Annex is not equipped to handle a Covid-19 outbreak,” the detainees write in the letter to which they had access The opinion.
“In addition, ICE and DHS (Department of Homeland Security) do not care what happens to us, and they show no concern for our safety or our lives,” they say.
And they continue: “Seeing how quickly the virus spread, the most humane and reasonable conclusion would be to realize that detention centers like GSA are not in the public interest nor are the detainees and, therefore, it is better to release us before the consideration of inhuman treatment of detention or give us compassionate release to further prevent the spread of covid-19.”
They say ICE and GEO have consistently failed to protect people in custody from contracting Covid-19, which is especially dangerous given the forced congregate setting and widespread medical neglect in migrant detention centers. .
They recalled that the first covid death of a person in ICE custody occurred in a privately managed detention center in California.
“The detention is arbitrary and has now become a health risk,” said Guillermo Silva Hernández, currently detained at the Golden State Annex Center.
“We have no personal security here; and all to maintain an economy that detains people who should be free. “We are human beings!” she exclaimed in the letter.
April Newman of the organization California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice said Kern County and the California Department of Public Health have the authority, as clarified by AB 263, to enforce health orders at private detention centers that maintain contracts with the federal government such as the Golden State Annex .
“We ask that you ensure that detained individuals receive all available care, which we believe is only possible outside the walls of the GSA.”
GEO Group was fined more than $100,000 less than a year ago by the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health (CalOSHA) for not having a plan to control diseases like Covid that are transmitted by infectious particles or droplets through the inhalation or direct contact with the mucous membranes of the respiratory tract or eyes.
And he was also sanctioned after six violations of CalOSHA health codes were detected.
The Golden State Annex is located 135 miles north of Los Angeles, in the city of McFarland, in Kern County where there has been a recent spike in Covid-19 cases for at least a month.
Despite this new wave of covid, immigrant advocates assure that neither ICE nor the GEO Group have taken adequate steps to protect people from this disease, which puts those in custody and members at greater risk. of the surrounding community.
They point out that detainees who have fallen ill with Covid-19 reported that they have been denied access to antiviral medications and have only been given cough drops and electrolytes.
The opinion is awaiting a comment from ICE and GEO Group on the situation reported by the detainees at the Golden State Annex.