While many recent immigrants here in Gainesville and across the country are business owners, medical professionals and academics, the jobs that other immigrants typically depend on are rapidly disappearing.
For everyone’s sake, detainees who have not committed a crime should be released to await deportation hearings at home.įederal immigration policy deters documented as well as undocumented immigrants from health care in a pandemic. All detainees, guards, staff and their families are at extremely high risk of contacting the virus.
“This ICE raid has negatively impacted efforts to include immigrant residents in critical community safety and COVID testing measures,” said Fran Ricardo of the North Central Florida Social Service/Hispanic Alliance.ĭetention centers, where detainees are housed in close quarters in “pods” and are deprived of outdoor recreation or even a chance to see sunlight in a windowless jail, will find it difficult to halt the spread of disease once an individual with unrecognized or untreated symptoms arrives. People are afraid to access any public service, including medical services. Rural Women’s Health Project () and Human Rights Coalition of Alachua County () are raising funds for bail and to tide over local families deprived of their breadwinner.Īctions like this send a chill through immigrant communities, where spouses, children, friends and neighbors may be American citizens or legal residents. Since visitation has been suspended in all detention facilities, Baker Interfaith Friends can’t meet with these detainees and lawyers from Florida Legal Services can only consult with their clients by telephone, a difficult situation at the best of times. “The decision came too late for at least 13 people in our community stopped on their way to work for nothing more than their immigration status,” Ibarrola said. The same day ICE headquarters announced that they would postpone raids like this for the duration of the coronavirus crisis and “focus only on pursuing people who pose public safety risks and individuals subject to mandatory detention on criminal grounds.” None of the men were in that category nor were others stopped and questioned in these raids.
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