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How the Asylum Process Became Another Carceral Matrix
The Trump administration has issued numerous policies to systematically dismantle asylum as a legal right.
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Marisol Mendoza Has Been In ICE Detention Since 2016. Now, She Has COVID-19
NPR’s Michel Martin speaks with Valeria Fernández and Jude Joffe-Block about their reporting on the case of Marisol Mendoza, who has been in ICE detention since 2016 and is now ill with COVID-19. Read More At NPR
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COVID-19 cases grow at Arizona jail with largest concentration of U.S. Marshals detainees in nation
PHOENIX – A private facility in Florence, Arizona that houses more than 3,000 defendants awaiting federal court proceedings is grappling with an outbreak of COVID-19 where at least 20 jail staff and detainees have tested positive since the facility’s first confirmed case in late April. Close to two hundred more detainees are in isolation or…
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COVID-19 cases surge at American Airlines ramps in Phoenix
PHOENIX – At least 70 American Airlines ground crew workers at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport have tested positive for COVID-19 as of April 27, including four that required hospitalization, according to union officials. The numbers are expected to climb as individuals from the 1,000-member “below the wing” crews continue getting tested. The first case…
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La Palma cases increase after ICE assured judge of no suspected cases
Three days after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials claimed in court filings that there were no longer any active or suspected COVID-19 cases in an Arizona immigration detention facility, four more detainees there tested positive for the virus. The additional cases were posted on ICE’s Coronavirus guidance website, which lists daily updates about new confirmed…
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ICE tactics to limit spread of COVID-19 in detention centers stir controversy
A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer revealed in court documents April 13 that 98 immigrant detainees at the La Palma Correctional Center in Arizona were, as of that morning, “cohorted” and under daily observation due to their exposure to the facility’s first confirmed case of COVID-19 on April 1. ICE is using the strategy of “cohorting”…
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Tensions skyrocket as COVID-19 fears grip Arizona detention center
PHOENIX – Rodrigo Martínez was certain he had a fever. Gasping for air, he said, felt like breathing pepper. It burned. It had been several days, and still, no one at the La Palma Correctional Center had taken his temperature, Martínez told AZCIR in a phone interview on Saturday. The 32-year-old Mexican national hadn’t been tested for…
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Deported amid coronavirus: US sends Guatemalan family home to face new threat
As the plane descended into Guatemala City, María tried to calm her six-year-old niece. “Mami, I feel like I’m falling,” the girl told her from the window seat next to her. María, 26, was scared too, and not just because this deportation flight was her first time in the air. They were returning to Guatemala – the…
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‘It is beyond cruel’: Ice refuses to reunite girl with the only family she has left
For more than nine months, María, 23, has been waiting in an immigration detention center in Arizona hoping to reunite with the six-year-old niece she raised as a daughter. When the two asked for asylum at the border last March because they feared for their lives in Guatemala, border officials detained María in the Eloy…
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She raised her niece like a daughter. Then the US government separated them at the border
The six-year-old girl on the other end of the line tells Alexa she fears they will never be together again. In another 15-minute phone call, she questions if Alexa still loves her. She asks Alexa to pick her up from the family she’s staying with in New York. Alexa hears the girl say the words…