Good Governance Demands the End of ICE Enforcement and Detention under COVID-19

Guest blogger: Joseph Kramer, graduate student, Migration Studies, University of San Francisco

Amidst this outbreak of COVID-19 concern has spread globally, cases have skyrocketed and deaths have impacted nearly every country on the planet. If anything has become apparent since the beginning of this outbreak; it is that there are certain populations that are more at risk than others and that has very much to do with the systems of governance that are designed to control not only the movement of bodies but whether those bodies are provided for.

Bio-politics and necro-politics are prevalent in every form of governance with no regard to whether the government in question is a democracy or dictatorship. There is positive bio-politics such as public health initiatives that lead to the creation of vaccines, and there are negative bio-politics such as putting people in prison or relegating them to camps or detention centers. The reality of necro-politics comes with the name. The reason I bring this up is because there is a specific group of people that remain at a high risk of contracting COVID-19 but lack the protection and resources afforded to citizens, and more importantly in the case of the US access to healthcare.

Migrants have not only been at risk populations (both documented and undocumented) within the United States in general but now with the outbreak of this virus migrants find themselves detained across the country after being arrested by ICE agents, who are still conducting raids even in the midst of this crisis. The response from the federal government illustrates a glaring dialectic of governance (migration governance especially) between “democracies” like the United States and “authoritarian” states such as China.

This dialectic centers on the subject of “good governance” and what that looks like within the current context. In certain circles, good governance might be described as one that has very little pull on the everyday lives of its citizens. In others it might come in the form of government assistance in order to provide healthcare, housing, schooling and other basic needs. But what does good governance look like within the migration perspective, especially during times of crisis?

I think it is important to stress the examination of governance through the lens of “times of crisis” when discussing migration governance because it is this context that plays a large part in the argument I am about to make. A public health problem such as a global pandemic, like all crises, has a hierarchy of needs. This hierarchy dictates how funds are distributed, what kind of protocols are put into place, and more generally how day to day life functions under such conditions. It is then logical to assume that the needs of the nation (which presumably would be the needs of its citizens) would come first. In this current administration this has been ignored to a worrying extent. The needs of the nation have been replaced with the need to prop up Wall Street, bailout corporations, and more generally undersell the severity of the situation in order to avoid “panic” in the markets while putting millions at risk.

This is problematic for many reasons and illustrates a general lack of responsibility by the government to take care of its citizens. So what does this have to do with migration exactly? If care should be directed at citizens, why should the government care for those who do not fall under that category or those that are currently in ICE custody? To put it simply, the term “citizen” should be replaced with “taxpayer” or even “resident” due to the fact that the federal government relies upon those of us that pay taxes and prop up the economy with our everyday business. If this is the definition, then it is safe to say that a vast majority of non-citizen workers (documented or not) pay taxes and contribute to society and therefore deserve the protection of the state. Simple as that. There should be no fear of removal or detention.

All non-essential services (ICE included) should be halted. No one can convince me that there is a need to arrest and detain anyone who isn’t a violent criminal. We are seeing that in jails and sheriff’s offices across the country when talking about minor offenses. So there is a precedent for such a call. If we look at nations like Portugal, during this crisis everyone that remained in the country after lockdown is being treated as a citizen no matter their status.

For those in detention already, there is an obligation by the US government, if they wish to continue to arrest and detain immigrants via ICE raids, to take care of those already within their custody. This means following protocols, and establishing health checks for all those detained, and for the release of any and all detainees that do not fall under the aggravated felon category at the very least. As long as the government continues to ignore the severity of COVID-19 and the risk it represents to immigrant communities both in detention and outside of detention, there will continue to be deaths, there will be more infections and the likelihood that these infected populations would perpetuate the spread of the virus across the country is high.

What this discussion ultimately yields is a question: Will the US government stand to protect the lives of those within its borders? Or will it let those people die? If they choose the latter then what really is “good governance” and is the United States able to say it isn’t hypocritical when attempting to lead on the global stage?

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