I want to express my thanks for Jeremy Redmon’s story, “ICE detainee held in South Georgia dies” (News, May 26), which sums up the sorry situation of undocumented individuals held in Stewart, the privately owned for-profit prison in Lumpkin. Inadequate medical attention in facilities of this sort have made the outbreak of coronavirus all but inevitable. Having had the opportunity to work with “El Refugio,” an organization in close contact with asylum seekers who have been detained and with their family members, I can attest to the fact requests for medical attention are frequently ignored. Given their close quarters, additional breakouts are all but inevitable. A sensible solution would be to release detainees—the vast majority of whom are not criminals and of no threat to society — thus allowing them to protect themselves from coronavirus at home while waiting for the courts to resolve their cases.
DIANA ANHALT, ATLANTA
Drumbeat of COVID-19 news scares people, hurts economy
I see in my morning AJC there were 15 weekend highway fatalities including six motorcycle deaths. So why don’t we see daily headlines lamenting these deaths and calling for quarantining all drivers? Get these people off the roads and save their lives. You have no problem with page after page every day with each and every elderly, unhealthy person dying of COVID-19. Why not the same concern about the daily slaughter on our highways? Seriously, perhaps a daily drumbeat of headlines would raise the awareness of highway deaths; in fact, statistically, you are much more likely to die in a traffic crash than of COVID-19. Plus, highway fatalities are killing our young and healthy. But of course this does not support your motives of scaring people out of their wits while destroying our economy and the lives and dreams of people who no longer have jobs. By the way, how many COVID deaths were there over the weekend in Georgia?
GENE HENRY, ATLANTA
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