‘We can can actually keep them healthier in ICE detention…’
MS-13 members/IMAGE: Vice via Youtube
(Joshua Paladino, Liberty Headlines) The Center for Immigration Studies on Monday discussed the push for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to release illegal aliens from detention centers during the Wuhan virus outbreak.
Jails throughout the country are releasing inmates to protect their health, but some immigration experts question the need for this policy.
Andrew Arthur, a CIS law and policy fellow, said illegals aliens who are subject to deportation cannot be released from detention centers if they have committed a dangerous crime, are likely to commit a crime or pose a flight risk.
Some illegal aliens, however, can be released on bond.
Arthur said immigration authorities do not need to release illegal aliens, however, to keep them safe from the spread of the infection.
“Those aliens who are detained have access to medical care while they’re in detention,” he said. “If they get COVID-19, then they’ll be placed in medical care.”
He said detention facilities have “zero air-flow rooms” to isolate those who are infected as well as those who have come into contact with them.
“Anybody who comes into contact with those individuals will also be screened to make sure that they do not have the novel coronavirus,” he said.
Mark Krikorian, executive director of CIS, asked Arthur if illegal aliens are more or less likely to come into contact with virus if they are released into the general public.
Arthur said detention centers can “significantly” limit interactions among illegal aliens, “so we can can actually keep them healthier in ICE detention.”
Plus, illegal aliens can access medical care “24/7” in detention centers. If they are released, though, they are less likely to see a primary care doctor and more likely to go to the emergency room.
In Bristol County, Massachusetts, Sheriff Thomas Hodgson said a federal judge ordered him to release 45 illegal aliens even though the prison does not have any COVID-19 cases.
Hodgson said employees at the Bristol House of Correction take many precautions to prevent the spread of the virus:
- The prison does not allow visitors or vendors.
- Staff must have their temperature taken before entering the prison.
- Employees sanitize every unit “at least three times a day.”
- Medical staff are prepared in case someone at the prison tests positive for COVID-19.
- The prison has separate facilities to isolate detainees with the virus.
“This judge is allowing people with serious, serious criminal histories to be released under this notion that perhaps they might catch the COVID-19 virus, and…people who are here illegally do not have a regular doctor, they don’t have medical support with a medical plan, so the first place they’re going to go is going to be an emergency room,” Hodgson said.
Another problem with releasing illegal aliens, especially during an economic crisis, is that they do not have jobs.
Hodgson said many illegal aliens who are released will turn to crime, drug abuse or both.
“They, frankly, are safer in our prison than they would be on the outside,” he said.
“We have no cases of COVID-19, and this judge still claims under humanitarian initiative that they possibly could contract it,” Hodgson continued, “that therefore they should be allowed out into the community, with no regards for the threat to the people for their public safety and for their public health.”
