Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Judiciary Committee Demands DHS Explain Why It Thinks It Has Authority To Bypass Existing Asylum Laws
Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee are demanding information about what they call an “unprecedented expansion of executive power” by the Trump administration at the the U.S.-Mexico border, after a ProPublica story revealed how the administration has used emergency powers to bypass asylum law and summarily expel thousands of migrants. In a letter written by Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., he and nine colleagues give the Department of Homeland Security until April 15 to explain why it believes it can use one section of U.S. law — which gives emergency powers to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to prohibit the entry of people or things that might “introduce” infectious disease — to preempt the government’s obligation under another section of federal law protecting migrants fearing persecution in their home countries. (Lind, 4/8)
Federal immigration authorities have released more than 160 migrants from detention and are reviewing the cases of other detainees who could be at risk to contract the new coronavirus, the Trump administration said Tuesday. As of March 30, 600 migrant detainees had been identified as vulnerable to the virus, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a statement. (Hackman, 4/7)
As the number of confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus creeps up at Otay Mesa Detention Center, the agency responsible for immigration detention has announced that it will review detainees for release because of health conditions believed to place people at higher risk. But for some high-risk detainees, that may be too late because of the way people in custody are grouped under quarantine. The facility holds detainees in immigration custody for Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as inmates for federal criminal cases for the U.S. Marshals Service. (Morrissey, 4/8)
A U.S. Border Patrol agent wouldn’t let Jackeline Reyes explain why she and her 15-year-old daughter needed asylum, pointing to the coronavirus. That confrontation in Texas came just days after the Trump administration quietly shut down the nation’s asylum system for the first time in decades in the name of public health. “The agent told us about the virus and that we couldn’t go further, but she didn’t let us speak or anything,” said Reyes, 35, who was shuttled to a crossing March 24 in Reynosa, Mexico, a violent border city. (Verza, Spagat and Galvan, 4/9)
