The American Immigration Council, along with the undersigned organizations and their members across the country, provide legal services to and advocate for individuals in removal proceedings as well as those detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
This letter to the White House Domestic Policy Council and the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) follows a March 23, 2020, letter raising major concerns about the ICE and EOIR response to what was then the first wave of the novel coronavirus, also known as COVID-19. Since the initial letter, more than 400,000 people in the United States have died from contracting the virus. The organizations write to call specific attention to EOIR policies that continue to place everyone’s health at risk during what has become the greatest period of community spread of COVID-19, when record numbers of people inside the United States have contracted the virus.
The organizations respectfully request that the Biden administration address several previous recommendations that have not yet been implemented, and effectuate new emergency responses as the virus overruns local health systems across the nation.
