Carla Manso

Volunteers Transcend Borders in Moral Outrage

The risks immigration detention poses on the health and well-being of migrant and refugee populations is the most important reason why IDC strives to build movements to reduce immigration detention and implement non-custodial community-based alternatives. The potential impact of detention on the mental and physical health of those detained is so severe that its use as a message of deterrence, immigration control or as a blanket response to groups of migrants cannot be justified. The response of some of the world's principal detaining countries over the past few months has brought this reality into focus.

The United States and the United Kingdom are just two of these countries that have so far continued to detain migrants indefinitely in prison environments throughout the pandemic, responding woefully inadequately to issues of public health in immigration detention. With the US representing the oldest and largest detention system in the world and the UK maintaining one of the largest in Europe, this August IDC partners, Freedom for Immigrants and AVID - Association of Visitors to Immigration Detainees (which convene networks of volunteer visitor groups across the US and the UK, respectively) sent an open letter on behalf of 40 visitation groups to both governments calling for the release of all people from immigration detention.

Representing 1,778 volunteers who regularly visit people in 47 immigration detention facilities in both countries, these community advocates joined together across two continents in moral outrage at the continued detention of migrants and refugees in the face of verified reports of substandard medical care by private contractors, poor emergency care, gross failures and medical neglect, failure to prevent communicable diseases, and severe restrictions in on-going detention, such as ad hoc quarantines and solitary confinement, leading to a devastating impact on mental health including hunger strikes and mass harm.

Our concern regarding the consequences that state policies have on the health and well-being of people impacted by and at-risk of immigration detention is exacerbated by the fact that both the US and UK governments have responded to Covid-19 by terminating all social visits and limiting communication with the outside world. This leaves migrants without independent medical support, face-to-face contact with family, community and lawyers in many cases.

According to Freedom for Immigrants, the right to receive visits in immigration detention is an emerging international norm and the European Union has begun to protect this right. However, most countries in the world do not recognize this right and the operation of visitation programs is almost always entirely in the discretion of an individual detention facility. The volunteer visitation groups convened by Freedom for Immigrants and AVID not only provide crucial interpersonal support to people isolated in detention centers, they also monitor for human and civil rights abuses and promote government accountability in many areas, including detainee health and well-being.

It is through these important and unique programs that organizations like Freedom for Immigrants and AVID receive reports of widespread instances which show it is impossible to comply with public health guidance inside detention. In this time of a global pandemic, the only way to ensure that the hundreds of thousands of people needlessly detained do not contract Covid-19 is to facilitate their release.

Join IDC, Freedom for Immigrants and AVID in calling for the safe, timely and managed release of all detained migrants into the care of their communities.

Read and share the open letter

#StartWith1Visit

#FreeThemAll

#ThereAreAlternatives

For further information, please contact Christina Fialho at Freedom for Immigrants, [email protected], and Ali McGinley at AVID, [email protected].

by Carla Manso

IDC Calls for Releases & Moratoriums Along With US & Mexico Members

The United States and Mexico have for decades been the primary detaining countries in the Americas region, with the largest detention centers and the most sophisticated immigration control and deportation systems. It is estimated that the United States has close to 40,000 people currently in immigration detention and Mexico around 2,000. Against a background of the increasing use of detention, and of particular concern, the continued detention of children, the threat of Covid-19 and a global movement of social distancing highlights the extreme vulnerability of people in immigration detention to the spread of infectious disease, as well as the lack of access to adequate medical care, over and above the rights violations implicit in a system of mandatory immigration detention.

Advocates in Mexico have rallied together around this issues, with a powerful collective of IDC Americas member and partner organizations initiating a multi-level advocacy strategy to demand that the Mexican government release migrants from detention centers due to the risk of contagion of Covid-19 due to the conditions in which people are deprived of liberty.

Together with Instituto para las Mujeres en la Migración, Sin Fronteras, Fundación para la Justicia y el Estado de Derecho, Asylum Access, Otros Dreams en Acción, and other partners, we launched a campaign calling on the Mexican government to release all migrants and asylum seekers from detention centers and provide them with immigration documentation in the form of a temporary humanitarian visa, temporarily suspend migrant raids and enforcement measures throughout the country to avoid new detentions and to provide information regarding the national measures being taken to avoid the spread of Covid-19 and contact information for local health clinics, international and national organizations.

Collective litigation and advocacy work

Throughout these last weeks we have also highlighted the collective litigation and advocacy work that has been carried out by more than 40 organizations concerned with the freedom and health of migrants in the framework of the pandemic: These actions are reflected in various webinars, communications to federal and state authorities, law suits, a complaint to the National Human Rights Commission (Comisión Nacional de Derechos Humanos), reports and calls to action.

Advocates are perhaps most hopeful of the unprecedented success seen recently in the courts. Some of these organizations filed a constitutional legal action and the court issued a favorable historic resolution, an injunction ordering immigration authorities in Mexico to immediately release migrants belonging to vulnerable groups that are currently detained and to ensure that no child is detained in a detention center. These are two of 11 measures ordered to safeguard the life and health of the more than 2,000 migrants and asylum seekers that immigration authorities have reported in detention. Legal actions continue in various states in the country, in order to keep up the legal pressure for immigration authorities to comply with the order, of which to date there has been no notification.

At the time of writing, it appears that this collective advocacy is having some impact and IDC Americas has received reports that apprehensions have slowed down and many detained migrants have been released in Mexico in recent weeks, albeit without a formal procedure. It is unclear what actions immigration authorities will take in the coming weeks. The advocacy challenge remains to establish release procedures with screening and safeguards, as well as referral to post-release support structures. IDC Americas joins our Mexican partners in working on a range of proposals to develop and implement alternatives to detention for those released or at risk of further detention. Of additional concern is that deportations continue, as Mexican immigration authorities have been concentrating detained migrants in the three largest detention centers of Mexico City, Acayucan and Tapachula, deporting some through negotiated agreements with Central American governments.

Furthermore, Amnesty International Mexico has called on the country's highest Covid-19 authority, the Undersecretary of Health Prevention and Promotion, to back these calls for release of detained migrants and asylum seekers to protect their health and to make a public plea to immigration authorities in this regard, as well as providing access to housing and health services to the migrant and refugee population in Mexico.

The next few days will be crucial for Mexican migration and health authorities whose duty is to put migrant's right to health above immigration control in order to reduce the risks of Covid-19 infection among this population.

Further north in the region, advocates in the United States have been amongst the most active, progressive and vocal on calling for release of the tens of thousands currently held in immigration detention centers and jails around the country. Two new reports, the first from the Detention Watch Network and the second from Amnesty International, clearly demonstrate the high risk to the lives of migrants in detention and the collective public health threat posed by unnecessary immigration detention.

Advocacy strategies range from litigation for release of immigrants from detention to important community organizing through broad national campaigns that also amplify state and local actions, such as Detention Watch Network's call to #FreeThemAll. Further, nearly 200 state, local and national organizations worked with Congress to support the Federal Immigrant Release for Safety and Security Together Act  (First Act) to work toward the release of people from detention. The Act provides urgent and critical restrictions on immigration detention and enforcement during this unprecedented national public health emergency to protect immigrant communities and collective health. You can read their letter of support.

Several of IDC's member and partner organizations have shared a range of useful collective research and advocacy tools and resources in response to Covid-19.

Detention Watch Network developed and shared on its website key messaging guidance on Covid-19 and immigration detention and a useful toolkit to support local demands for mass release from ICE custody.

The Vera Institute of Justice has shared Guidance for preventative and responsive measures to coronavirus in immigration detention

Freedom for Immigrants launched a section of their National Immigration Detention Hotline specifically to respond to Covid-19.  With social visitation indefinitely suspended, this court-protected hotline is one of the few free and confidential resources available to maintain communication with people in detention. They are also providing people across the United States with housing post release through a network of volunteers and a house they operate in Louisiana.

Freedom for Immigrants also released an interactive real-time map that tracks the number of cases in U.S. immigration detention and the government's failure to adequately respond to this pandemic. They have so far documented over 100 confirmed Covid-19 cases since the first person was diagnosed in late March. This tool tracks reports of isolation and quarantine measures in responses to Covid-19, noting their implementation in an ad hoc and dangerous way. Detention staff failure to observe proper health protocols and extreme inadequate medical responses during lockdown, resulting in substantial risk to both detained and non-detained populations, are also documented.

One initiative to watch in the coming weeks is Justice in Motion´s recently launched Child Detention Crisis Initiative, which will work through their Defender Network to bring together advocates from the United States, Central America and Mexico to free migrant children from U.S. immigration detention and reunite them with their families.

Finally, on April 26, the immigration authorities reported through a bulletin that they had emptied almost its entire population from detention centers. There are many criticisms of the lack of a program of alternatives that would have allowed the channeling of migrants to hostels or hotels, instead there were massive deportations, even of childhood and adolescence, to places that could be a risk for them, not only of getting Covid-19. There is still a need for coordination between actors to guarantee the right to health of people who are still in Mexico through a program of alternatives managed by authorities and civil society.

by Carla Manso