How ICE's deployment to D.C. protests led to a massive coronavirus outbreak at an immigration jail

An immigrant is put on a deportation flight.
(Image credit: John Moore/Getty Images)

The largest coronavirus outbreak at an immigration jail may have been completely avoidable.

More than 300 inmates at Farmville, Virginia's immigration detention center contracted COVID-19 and one died of the virus after detainees from other states were transferred to the jail. And it all seemingly started because Immigration and Customs Enforcement wanted to send its agents to Washington, D.C., The Washington Post reports.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

But because ICE employees can't travel on charter flights without detainees also onboard, the administration had to find a workaround. ICE, claiming it wanted to stem overcrowding at Arizona and Florida immigration jails, loaded detainees onto a plane along with agents it wanted to transfer and flew them to Farmville, a Department of Homeland Security official told the Post. The Virginia facility is the closest large immigration jail to Washington, D.C.

Within days, "dozens of the new arrivals tested positive for the novel coronavirus," the Post writes, fueling an outbreak that encompassed the whole jail. Read more at The Washington Post.

Explore More

Kathryn is a graduate of Syracuse University, with degrees in magazine journalism and information technology, along with hours to earn another degree after working at SU's independent paper The Daily Orange. She's currently recovering from a horse addiction while living in New York City, and likes to share her extremely dry sense of humor on Twitter.