The U.S. has the largest immigration detention system in the world. On any given day, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency holds tens of thousands of people in about 200 facilities across the country. And throughout the pandemic, these facilities have become some of the most dangerous places when it comes to covid-19 outbreaks.
As cases rose last June, detention facilities had an average infection rate five times that of prisons and 20 times that of the general population.
To understand the risks, The New York Times talked to former detainees, data scientists, lawyers, county officials and the family of a former contractor about the spread of covid-19 inside and outside the detention centers. The Times also reviewed court documents, medical records of detainees and government inspection reports from June 2020 to March 2021. Here's what was found:
FORMER DETAINEE
Sandra Esqueda has lived in the U.S. for more than 30 years and has raised her seven children here. She is a Mexican immigrant and is living illegally in the country.
In April 2020, Esqueda was driving home from a family vacation when she was stopped at an immigration checkpoint in New Mexico.
She was taken to the El Paso Service Processing Center, a detention facility run by the enforcement agency, and held for just shy of seven months.
"When I got there, they were not keeping distance. They were not using masks," she said. "Most of the time, there were like 40 to 50 people in the same barracks."
Detainees had reported similar conditions at facilities around the country in a federal lawsuit. Just days before Esqueda was detained, a federal court said the agency exhibited "callous indifference" to the safety and well-being of its detainees, and ordered the agency to start releasing people who were at a greater risk of dying from covid-19.
The agency said it has worked to reduce the number of people in custody, and said it has taken extensive steps to safeguard detainees, staff and contractors. But lawyers and activists said detainees were consistently denied release through the summer of 2020.
Rosa De Jong, a paralegal at Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, worked to get Esqueda out of detention: "I knew she was going to get it," De Jong said. "I just didn't know if I could get her out before she got it."
Esqueda started displaying symptoms of covid-19 in September. She went to the clinic Sept. 11, reporting that she had a fever the night before and that she felt sick, but she was denied a covid-19 test and sent back to the barracks. She was tested five days later -- positive.
"Everybody got infected," she said. "It was like more than 25 girls."
DAUGHTER OF FORMER NURSE
"I never imagined that this would happen," said Nataly Garcia. "That I would lose my mom to this."
For 20 years, Blanca Garcia worked as a nurse at the Webb County Detention Center in Laredo, Texas, a facility run by private contractor CoreCivic.
"I wanted to become a nurse because of her, and she really inspired me," Garcia said while holding back tears. "She was my best friend, and I would talk to her about everything."
Her mother got sick with covid-19 in August, shortly after the detention center was placed under a mandatory quarantine order because of an outbreak among detainees. Blanca Garcia died a few weeks later.
On the kitchen table at her parents' home, Nataly Garcia placed a biomedical bag containing items from her mother's locker, given to her by CoreCivic. Inside it were a makeup-stained homemade mask, an employee of the month certificate and a "Get Well Soon" letter from her co-workers, among other items.
After her mother died, Garcia reached out to CoreCivic to file a workers' compensation claim, which would pay a lifetime benefit to her father. But the company's insurance carrier denied the claim, concluding there was not a "causal relation" between her mother's diagnosis of covid-19 and her employment at CoreCivic.
"She was working 12-hour shifts, three days a week," said Garcia, who described her mother as leaving the house only for work, while she and her father stayed at home.
"For someone to tell us otherwise, that she didn't get sick from work," Garcia said, "it's like a slap in the face."
CoreCivic is facing at least three lawsuits from former employees who claim the company put them at risk by failing to follow basic covid-19 protocols. The company has denied the claims. It also declined to comment on the specific circumstances of Blanca Garcia's death, but said it found no indication that she contracted the virus at work.
Her daughter is working with a workers' compensation lawyer to appeal the case.
FRIO COUNTY COMMISSIONER
In April 2020, there were zero documented cases of covid-19 in rural Frio County, Texas.
"But then the cases started coming in only at the detention center," said Jose Asuncion, a county commissioner.
Frio County has a population of about 20,000, but it's home to two migrant detention facilities.
By May 5, 2020, there were 10 known cases of covid-19 in Frio County, all linked to the South Texas Processing Center. Three days later, the number had tripled.
"It was clear the eye of the storm was the detention center," Asuncion said. "And it was inevitable that it was going to spread to the community."
In a rare move, Asuncion and eight other officials wrote an open letter to the GEO group, the private prison company that the enforcement agency contracts to run the detention center.
"The first thing we wanted was just information," Asuncion said. "And we were not getting any answers." He added, "The only resort we had was public pressure."
The letter included a list of 20 questions about testing, protective equipment and employee safety protocols. The company responded in a short letter, confirming that five employees at the facility did test positive, but they didn't provide any of the other numbers that Asuncion and his colleagues had requested. GEO is a private company and isn't required to release this information to the public.
GEO said the company has followed agency and CDC guidelines and disclosed all covid-19-related information to local health officials and to the agency. Asuncion said he never received updates that he and his colleagues had requested from the company.
"There are a lot of people who see the problem that these private prisons pose," said Asuncion. "But who wants to jeopardize what other people see as an opportunity? Who wants to jeopardize their own job?"
By July, Frio County was among the worst counties in the country for covid-19. Today, one in seven residents have been infected.