Renewed Calls for ICE to Release Detainees After Father Kills Himself at Family Detention Center
A father died by suicide today at the Karnes detention center today.
We are in shock & deeply disturbed by this devastating news.
Story details below but please join us to demand @ICEgov release immigrants from detention IMMEDIATELY before the virus gets in.
— RAICES (@RAICESTEXAS) March 19, 2020
Chantal Da Silva for Newsweek reports on renewed calls by immigration advocates for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to release detained immigrants amid the coronavirus outbreak after a father kept at a family detention center in Texas killed himself. The Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES) said its team had been left “in shock [and] deeply disturbed” after learning that the father, who the organization had been representing, had died by suicide at the Karnes County Residential Center.
“The father was our client [and] we were fighting for his and his family’s freedom,” RAICES said in a Twitter thread. RAICES said: “We stand in solidarity with the family that has to bear this tragedy due to the injustice of Trump’s draconian anti-immigrant policies.” “We’re both devastated by this news but also very angry,” the organization said, with the suicide marking the ninth death in ICE custody in the 2020 fiscal year.
In the days leading up to the father’s death, RAICES and other immigration advocacy groups had repeatedly called on ICE to release families detained at the Karnes County Residential Center, as well as immigrants being held at facilities across the U.S., amid the coronavirus outbreak. “ICE is currently imprisoning roughly 700 people at Karnes, including pregnant women, children, and babies,” RAICES said.
Yesterday, Cesar Garcia in a New York Times op/ed called for closing immigration persons in the time of the coronavirus.
KJ