Federal immigration authorities and private corrections companies are scrambling to prevent the coronavirus from gaining a foothold in their detention centers in Georgia and across the nation, where hundreds of immigrants are held in close proximity.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said its Health Service Corps will isolate detainees with fevers and respiratory symptoms who appear at risk for exposure to the illness and will monitor them for 14 days. ICE said it will also consult with local health departments concerning the need for testing for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. Meanwhile, the agency is temporarily barring social visits at all of its detention centers.
As of midday Monday, no one had tested positive for the disease in Georgia’s immigration detention centers, according to ICE. Those facilities include the sprawling Stewart Detention Center in Stewart County. Located just outside the small city of Lumpkin, Stewart has capacity for 1,900 detainees. It has detained people from more than 140 countries and nearly every continent.
A spokesman for Nashville-based CoreCivic, which operates the detention center through agreements with ICE and Stewart County, said in an email that his company’s facilities are encouraging handwashing and coughing into sleeves or tissues and urging people not to touch their faces.
“Each of our facilities also has a comprehensive emergency response plan in place, which includes processes to: detect and track diseases; collect, analyze, and report data on individuals exhibiting signs of illness; and separate the sick from the well,” CoreCivic spokesman Ryan Gustin wrote. “Our health services administrators cooperate fully with local and state health departments and our protocols mirror local, state, and federal recommendations.”
The GEO Group, a Florida-based corrections company, operates the Folkston ICE Processing Center near the Georgia-Florida border and the Robert A. Deyton Detention Facility in Lovejoy, where ICE detainees are held.
GEO said nobody at those facilities has tested positive for the illness, although the company announced Saturday that one of its maintenance employees at the George W. Hill Correctional Facility in Thornton, Penn., had. GEO said it is following guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and has directed workers who came into contact with the sickened employee to self-quarantine at home with full pay. Eleven inmates who had contact with the worker have been placed in quarantine in a separate housing unit.
GEO said it has ordered “swab kits” for coronavirus, advised its workers to stay home if they have flulike symptoms and “deployed specialized sanitation teams to sterilize high-contact areas of our facilities.”
“We will continue to coordinate closely with our government partners and local health agencies to ensure the health and safety of all those in our care and our employees,” GEO said.
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