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President-elect Joe Biden promised to reverse Donald Trump’s most restrictive immigration policies during his 2020 campaign, but since he was elected, Biden has not included immigration among his top four priorities. Hundreds of immigrant activists and their allies caravaned through Biden’s home city of Wilmington, Delaware, demanding he issue a moratorium on deportations and advance a path to citizenship for undocumented people within his first 100 days in office. This comes as more than half of ICE’s immigration detention centers are currently reporting coronavirus outbreaks. Protesters are also mobilizing at the Northwest Detention Center run by GEO Group in Tacoma, Washington, where another detainee has tested positive for the coronavirus, bringing the number up to at least 22. ICE has punished many who protest conditions and call for release by putting them in solitary confinement. “Guards and employees of
COVID Cases in Prisons and ICE Immigration Jails Surpass 250,000
With a rapidly spreading coronavirus outbreak infecting about a third of all people incarcerated, medical tents are newly placed in a baseball field at San Quentin Prison during the COVID-19 pandemic in San Quentin, California, on July 9, 2020.
Melina Mara / The Washington Post via Getty Images
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The United States has the world’s highest incarceration rate and largest systems for locking people up. As soon as the COVID-19 pandemic began, experts and advocates warned the virus would be amplified by prisons and jails, where social distancing is impossible, ventilation is often poor and people are more likely to have underserved medical needs.