Release ICE detainees in public health’s interest, activists say
BY DONNA ACETO
AND PAUL SCHINDLER
A group organized last
summer by Jewish activists
opposed to the federal Immigration
and Customs Enforcement
(ICE) detention of more
than 50,000 undocumented
immigrants is now calling
for the emergency release of
those detainees because of the
risk they face from COVID-19
while in confi nement.
Never Again Action is
pressing governors across the
nation to use their executive
power to order the release of
immigrant detainees within
their states in the interest of
the immigrants’ safety and
the broader public health.
On the evening of March
20, Never Again Action members
gathered outside the
Thurgood Marshall Federal
Courthouse located close to
the ICE fi eld offi ce in Lower
Manhattan’s Foley Square.
Noting that there are 10 detention
centers in the New York
metropolitan area, the demonstrators
demanded that Governor
Andrew Cuomo move to
release those held in facilities
within New York State.
Explicitly linking the con-
Never Again Action Group projects photo of Anne Frank with message that she died of Typhus and ICE Detainees
cannot Social Distance. DONNA ACETO
fi nement of undocumented
immigrants to the rounding
up of European Jews during
the Holocaust, the group argues,
“Anne Frank didn’t die
in a gas chamber. Anne Frank
died because she caught an infectious
BRONX TIMES REPORTER,36 MARCH 27-APRIL 2, 2020 BTR
disease in a concentration
camp. We have seen
this before. We won’t let it
happen again. Never again is
now.”
The activists projected an
image of Anne Frank onto
the courthouse façade that explained
that the famous Dutch
Jewish teenage diarist died
of typhus in a cramped, inhuman
camp.
“Refusing to free refugees
during a pandemic is the
height of reckless cruelty,”
said protestor Brad Cohn. “I
hope Governor Cuomo has
either the compassion — or,
lacking that, the instinct for
self-preservation — to protect
all of us by liberating the most
vulnerable among us.”
A written release from
Never Again Action noted that
there have been confi rmed
COVID-19 cases among staff
at the privately-operated ICE
facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey,
and that detainees held in
Aurora, Colorado, may also
have been exposed to infection.
In three detention facilities
in New Jersey, immigrants
being held are on a hunger
strike, and the group last week
also did an action at the Essex
County Correctional Facility.
It is calling for Governor
Phil Murphy, like Cuomo, to
release detainees held within
his state.
Spokespeople for Cuomo
and Murphy did not immediately
respond to a request
for comment on whether each
governor believed he had the
authority to order the release
of federal detainees, and if so
whether he intended to do so.