ICE Detainees Got Pepper-Sprayed After Demanding Coronavirus Help

The new coronavirus has brought tensions in detention centers to new extremes, but what happened on March 25 at Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s LaSalle privately run detention center was months of neglect in the making, and ghoulish in its ironies. This is the story—in the women’s own words—of how a presentation about a virus that attacks people’s lungs culminated in guards in gas masks pepper-spraying inmates and slamming the door shut. To reconstruct the horror for this podcast, Mother Jones immigration reporter Noah Lanard talked to detainee Jennifer Avalos Barrios, five dormmates, a woman who watched things unfold from a neighboring dorm, and many of their loved ones. Most are using their real names, a courageous decision at a time when GEO Group, which runs the facility, is retaliating against people who speak to the media. Even in a pandemic, getting out of the LaSalle “ICE Processing Center” isn’t easy. Nearly 1,100 of the 1,335 beds there were full earlier this month. While ICE has released some people with medical conditions that make them vulnerable to COVID-19, it continues to hold many more in tight quarters that make social distancing impossible. (ICE and GEO Group did not respond to requests for comment for this show.)

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