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A diabetic immigrant in Ice custody sued for her release. Instead, she got Covid-19
Marisol Mendoza has Covid-19. She’s short of breath, coughs and feels pain in her back and chest. She doesn’t have the energy to stand up or eat much. She’s scared she will die, alone, in an isolation cell of the immigration detention center where she’s been held for the past four years. “Sometimes I think…
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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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Traumatized migrant kids were being shot. One school district came up with a plan to save them
Gilberto Ramirez spent three years in Oakland, California, working long hours pruning trees and grooming lawns with one goal in mind: saving up enough money for his wife and four children back in San Pedro Necta, Guatemala, to come join him. In March 2016, Ramirez got his wish when his wife, three sons and daughter reunited…
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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’s like a sick experiment’: Arizona lags behind as states order residents to stay home
For the last three weeks, 57-year-old Ann O’Connor has avoided leaving her home in Paradise Valley, Arizona, due to the Covid-19 pandemic. As a cancer survivor with asthma, she is considered high risk for severe illness, and she wants to do her part to stop the virus’s rapid spread. But others here are not taking…
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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…
