(Bloomberg) -- Children in immigration detention centers are “sitting ducks” waiting to contract the coronavirus, lawyers said in an emergency request to a judge to have them released.
It's impossible for the minors, who are either held with their families at Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities or without their families at Office of Refugee Resettlement contract facilities, to practice social distancing or increased hygiene, according to the request filed Thursday in Los Angeles federal court.
“To leave children on the tracks with the Covid-19 train fast approaching” is “unconscionable,” the lawyers wrote.
Two ORR facilities in New York have already had workers test positive for Covid-19, and one child is in quarantine in an ICE detention center in Pennsylvania, the lawyers said.
The request was made in the long-running Flores litigation that sets limits on how long and under what circumstances undocumented children can be detained. The agreement's restrictions led the Trump administration to separate children from their parents until a court order halted that practice.
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