ICE sickened hundreds of immigrant detainees to provide muscle for Trump’s D.C. photo-op.
This photo gave over 300 ICE detainees Covid-19. The explanation is complicated. To get the photo, Trump’s aides had to clear away peaceful protesters. The D.C. mayor wouldn’t do it with local police, so they flew in ICE special response teams from around the country. These teams usually are used to quell riots in ICE detention facilities, but there were no riots in D.C..
When those ICE agents are dispatched, they normally use ground transportation. If they must travel by air, they use commercial airlines. Under ICE rules, they can use special charters only if accompanying detainees. So they loaded the planes with detainees, who were dumped at a Virginia ICE facility, where hundreds of them contracted Covid-19 there.
The detainees were merely pawns in this operation. The sole purpose of transporting them was to justify the charter flights. The sole objective of the charter flights was to get the ICE special response teams to D.C., not to quell a riot in an ICE detention facility, or even help D.C. officials with crowd control, but to disperse peaceful protesters so Trump could wave a book he never reads front of a boarded-up church he never attends for political purposes.
Needless to say, ICE is being sued in federal court by lawyers representing the detainees who got Covid-19 because of this.
The Washington Post broke the story, but they have a paywall, so I linked to the Seattle Times, which republished it here.