While Coronavirus case numbers continue to grow across the United States, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) continues to detain individuals in overcrowded, unsafe, and unsanitary facilities.

Across the U.S., tens of thousands of people are being held in unsanitary detention centers, heightening their risk of contracting COVID-19. Organizations like the International Rescue Committee have raised awareness about the situation, citing potentially “super spreading” levels of Coronavirus infection within ICE centers.

As of right now, ICE has reported close to 4,000 cases in its detention centers since the beginning of the pandemic, 1,000 of which are still in custody right now. Arguably one of the most concerning facilities, Immigration Centers of America — Farmville, currently holds 261 active cases, with 289 total since March.

Inquiries indicate that 359 detainees total were tested in this facility earlier in July, and judging by the number of active cases, the test positivity rate could be at an alarming 80% or maybe even higher.

Outside of Farmville, ICE reports indicate that there have been a total of 19,092 tests since February, creating an average 20% test positivity rate in all detention centers, three times the current national test positivity rate. With approximately 660 tests a week since February for an average population of detainees of 60,000 (in this period), ICE has amounted to around 11 tests per every 1,000 people, just barely scraping past WHO safety guidelines.

These detention centers have always been overcrowded and unsafe, however the pandemic has maximized the danger detainees are exposed to in terms of public health. Using this as an excuse, ICE has taken to illegally expelling children as young as 8 months old back to their home countries, separated from their families.

Many advocacy groups have interviewed families in these centers and said that several people claim their children briefly vanish into the custody of the U.S. government, holding these minors in hotels with limited to no outside contact, before federal officials expel them from the U.S.

Ever since March, under an emergency health order, federal agents have had mounts of power to almost immediately return anyone at the border. Children are usually granted special protections under the law, protections that include having their asylum claims adjudicated by a judge.

However, with this new policy in place the administration is no longer deporting children, which is a proceeding that has its foundations in years of established law and needs a formal hearing. No, it is now expelling minors without a judge’s ruling, no access to social workers or lawyers, and sometimes without their families.

The Department of Homeland Security tracks all immigrants in its care through primary registration numbers, however children being expelled aren’t granted one, making it “virtually impossible” to find them after they have been turned over to U.S. custody, according to Efrén C. Olivares, a lawyer with the Texas Civil Rights Project.

Aside from the fact that it is illegal, little is known about this practice, however official government figures show that almost all children that arrive at the United States border are quickly returned. Between April and June alone, Customs and Border Protection officials came across 3,379 unaccompanied minors at or between ports of entry.

Out of these 3,379, only 162 were directed to federal shelters for immigrant children. CBP refused to comment on what had happened to the remaining 3,217 children, although many suggest that they were expelled or are being illegally detained in poorer-quality centers, without any outside contact.

Lawyers have received multiple calls from varying family members, frantic about the fact that their children went missing after crossing into the United States. Of the thousands of unaccompanied minors that have been expelled under Trump’s health order, organizations say that they have found only three dozen, even after months of searching everywhere in the United States, Mexico, and Central America.

One case is that of a Guatemalan teenager that arrived at the U.S. border, carrying her baby and begging for help. She said that she feared returning to Guatemala after the man that raped her had threatened to “make her disappear.” According to advocates, the child briefly vanished into U.S. custody after they held her baby for days on end in a hotel with no outside contact. The baby was only released when federal officers expelled the pair from the country.

She told her story to protection workers in Guatemala, alarming international refugee groups who then referred her for protection in a different country. No age or personal details were provided about the teenager, only the fact that she herself is also a minor.

According to The Associated Press, ICE detained at least 169 children in different hotels in El Paso, McAllen, and Phoenix, before expelling them. However, government numbers indicate over 240 children in the same situation over the past three months. Children themselves have claimed that they were held for several weeks in hotel rooms by unlicensed government contractors, with limited outside contact.

If this isn’t enough, advocates have repeatedly stated that this expulsion policy goes far beyond the practice of lengthy hotel detention, which is in direct violation of a long-standing court settlement that protects migrant children. They say that the majority of children who make it to the U.S. are almost immediately flown back to the danger they were fleeing in their home countries. Some children said that they were sent to Mexico in the middle of the night, even if it was not their home country.

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