There are more than 900 known cases of the novel coronavirus inside immigration detention centers. The actual number is certainly much higher, as Immigration and Customs Enforcement has tested only a little more than 2,000 detainees. The 200-plus immigration detention centers spread throughout the country—isolated, overcrowded, without sufficient medical staff—are effectively petri dishes for contagion, primed for the people locked up in them to contract and spread the virus. Given the fact that the government doesn’t even have to keep people locked up in immigration detention—by law, they could be paroled out—it is particularly galling to recall that over 30,000 people remain inside. To keep all its residents safe, Portugal, for example, took the unprecedented step of temporarily bestowing citizenship rights on all migrants and asylum seekers, so that they could access the necessary health care. The United States is taking the opposite approach: Using the virus as an excuse to further implement the anti-immigrant agenda the Trump administration has been pushing since the 2016 campaign, it is not only keeping migrants and asylum seekers locked up but also continuing to deport them, even when infected, to countries without the capacity to handle the disease, effectively deporting the virus. [John Washington, The Nation, May 18, 2020]
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| Two hands for freedom (Dover, NH) |
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| I see you (Dover) |
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| "Free Them Now" (Dover, NH) |
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| "Is this the fast I choose?" |
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| "Let my people go!" |
