COVID-19 Cases at One Texas Immigration Detention Center Soared in a Matter of Days. Now, Town Leade
It was a historic occasion for the South Texas town of Pearsall when officials broke ground in 2004 on what would become one of the country’s largest immigration detention centers.
Not only would it help improve border security, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn said then, it would also bring employment to the small rural community, about 60 miles from San Antonio. Hundreds of good jobs for a region that desperately needed them.
But now, as the coronavirus pandemic continues to spread inside immigration detention centers, local leaders here in an extraordinary move have called on the company that runs the center, the GEO Group, to publicly explain itself. They say the company has not been transparent, and has failed to respond to emails and letters seeking answers to a simple question: What is the GEO Group doing to prevent the virus outbreak inside the privately owned facility from creeping into their community?
The leaders have invited company officials to attend the Frio County commissioners meeting Monday and sent a list of 20 detailed questions, ranging from what safeguards are in place to protect employees and detainees to how it can make the information more readily available to the community.
“We did our part, we financed their construction. Now it’s time to hold them accountable, to help us,” said Jose Asuncion, a recently elected county commissioner who over the years has been pushing for more transparency in the for-profit detention industry.
“For many of us, this could be a matter of life and death,” a group of nine area elected officials and a candidate, including Asuncion, wrote in the open letter to the GEO Group on May 5.
The letter was drafted before the number of confirmed cases inside the South Texas ICE Processing Center jumped from seven to 31 detainees, as of Friday. Seven employees have also been infected.
https://www.govexec.com/oversight/2020/05/covid-19-cases-one-texas-immigration-detention-center-soared-matter-days-now-town-leaders-want-answers/165327/
