IRTF News

From Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction: There are at least 125 inmates with coronavirus in Ohio jails and 4,437 in the state’s prisons. Of the 78 inmates in the Morrow County Jail, 50 contracted coronavirus. It’s the second-highest number of coronavirus cases in any jail in Ohio. From the testimony of three Morrow inmates (ICE detainees) before US District Court Judge Sarah Morrison in Columbus on May 11: They reported that they sleep in such cramped quarters that they can reach out and touch four other beds. One testified that despite being in the area of the jail that houses coronavirus patients for 16 days, no jail employee had cleaned the area. Detainees get clean clothes every three or four days. Corrections officers take their temperatures, not nurses, and the thermometers used are more than three years beyond their expiration dates.

“This infection is on ICE’s hands,” said Elizabeth Bonham, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio. Oscar Lopez Acosta was originally from San Francisco de La Paz, a small municipality about 100 miles northeast of Tegucigalpa, Honduras. April 24: ICE released Oscar Lopez from Morrow County Jail because he and other detainees were experiencing high fever. He returned to his family in Dayton. On May 3, he tested positive for COVID-19. On May 4, ICE confirmed that 47 people in its custody at Morrow County had tested positive. On May 10, Oscar López died from complications from the coronavirus after being released from the hospital, the local coroner’s officer confirmed. Ohio Immigrant Visitation has set up a fundraiser for the family of Oscar Lopez Acosta. They need to cover the cost of his cremation, rent, and other living expenses as well as medical bills. Donate at www.paypal.me/ohioimmigrantvisits

Did you know that the sheriffs of four counties in Ohio are holding ICE immigrant detainees? Local governments are doing the dirty work of the feds in Butler, Geauga, Morrow, and Seneca County Jails. Unjust and insane! Thousands of doctors have spoken out on the need to IMMEDIATELY release detainees in ICE custody. We must demand that our public health departments wake up and echo this urgent call. Immigrant detainees are so desperate that some have gone on hunger strikes, knowingly weakening their immune systems. Lives are in jeopardy as COVID-19 continues to spread.

Congress is undermining our collective health and safety – and endangering our lives – by failing to provide adequate testing, treatment, and cash assistance for millions of immigrants. Our elected leaders are leaving behind DACA recipients, many green card holders, people with Temporary Protected Status, undocumented immigrants, and mixed-status families. Any federal COVID-19 relief package must include all communities. We call on Congress to take two urgent actions to protect us all: make COVID-related testing and treatment available under emergency Medicaid and provide cash assistance to everyone who files taxes.

Safe workplaces, dignified jobs, fair wages, good health. Those are things we can probably all agree we want. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed how far away that vision seems for too many of us. This month, workers at some of the biggest companies are walking off the job, protesting lack of protective equipment, sick leave, and other safeguards. Meanwhile, as 30 million people have lost their jobs and working people struggle to make ends meet, the billionaires at the top are making a killing. The pandemic is laying bare how the concentration of wealth and power is leaving too many behind. Here are a few ways to take action on behalf of workers.

The cases among deported migrants have alarmed the public in Guatemala and its U.S.-aligned government, which indefinitely suspended deportation flights from the U.S. earlier this month. Guatemala's government, which has allowed two "humanitarian" flights in the past two weeks to receive repatriated children and families, has said it will only permit the resumption of regular deportation flights once the U.S. improves its screening protocols.

The world should not praise Honduras and condemn Nicaragua for their very different responses [to the coronavirus], while ignoring the results in the numbers so far. Honduras, the United States, and Nicaragua seem to present different ways of dealing with…marginalized people. Nicaragua is tailoring its response to them, perhaps too much so, perhaps not. The U.S. is ignoring them. Honduras is persecuting them. The mainline media seem insensitive to cultural differences and marginalized people, and the media often fail to take account of inequalities. So far, the Nicaraguan strategy of emphasis on education and prevention and an open society with monitored borders seems to be working better than the iron hand strategy of the Honduran government. Berta Oliva, director of the Committee of the Families of the Detained/Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH), a major human rights organization, and other human rights leaders have accused the government and the military of using the pandemic as an opportunity to tighten control of the population through fomenting fear of the virus and imposing draconian state-of-siege measures. Keeping people in a precarious state serves the interests of a government that many Hondurans call a “dictatorship.”

Just days after the United Nations urged governments around the world to release vulnerable prisoners to ease overcrowding, President Bukele of El Salvador is doing the opposite. While Chile, Colombia and Nicaragua have announced they will move thousands of prisoners into house arrest, El Salvador is aiming to lock up more. El Salvador has one of the highest per capita murder rates in the world: 2.1 murders per day in March 2020. That average will go up in April since 24 people were killed on just one day, April 24. In response, the president has authorized the police and army to use lethal force to curb the violence. He is mixing members of rival gangs in prison cells and ordering 24/7 lockdown, saying that gangs are “taking advantage of the pandemic.” The security minister said that prisoners will: “not receive sunlight, they will be in total confinement 24 hours a day in [El Salvador’s] seven maximum security prisons.”