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Health experts have called immigration detention facilities ticking time bombs for coronavirus outbreaks; they are unventilated, sometimes overcrowded spaces where employees can potentially bring in the virus as they come and go.
Releasing detainees “will protect the health of migrants, our immigration enforcement personnel and our entire El Paso community,” Seitz said.
Several government officials — including state Senator José Rodríguez and El Paso County Judge Ricardo Samaniego — and immigrant advocacy groups joined the call. Many noted that the majority of ICE detainees have not been convicted of a crime.
In fact, as of July 2019, more than two-thirds of people detained in the El Paso region had no U.S. criminal conviction, according to data from the Transactional Resource Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. Most detainees with a conviction had only been convicted of immigration violations.
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