Quarantine Underway At ICE Detention Facility In Texas After Disease Outbreak Occurs

Go to Article

Quarantine measures are underway at an ICE detention facility in Texas.

The Department of Homeland Security on Monday announced that a measles outbreak had occurred at an ICE detention facility in Dilley, Texas.

According to reports, two detainees tested positive for measles and were placed in quarantine.

NBC News was the first to report on the measles outbreak:

Two detainees were infected with measles at a Texas immigration facility where 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his father had been held, a Department of Homeland Security official said Sunday.

The two patients at Dilley Immigration Processing Center were quarantined, alongside anyone else who may have made contact, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. “All movement” within the facility was halted, she said.

The detainees in question, who were not identified, were in good hands, she said. “This is the best healthcare than many aliens have received in their entire lives,” McLaughlin said.

Dilley Immigration Processing Center is where 5-year-old Liam and his father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, had been held until they were released Saturday. It wasn’t clear whether they may have been in contact with the infected detainees. An attorney for the family did not respond Saturday night to a request for comment.

Measles can be spread through the air through breathing, talking, coughing and sneezing, and it can remain an active infectious agent on surfaces. The infection — noted by rashes, red eyes, fever, coughing, and red bumps at the hairline — can be especially dangerous for infants, children, pregnant women, the elderly and people with compromised immune systems, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Read the announcement by the DHS here:

The Washington Post reported the DHS is currently attempting to turn warehouse buildings into ICE detnetion facilities as the current detnetion facilities are beginning to fill up:

One industrial building the federal government plans to overhaul into an immigrant detention center, in Roxbury, New Jersey, draws groundwater from a small town that uses nearly all of its daily limit.

Another proposed detention site is a warehouse in Oklahoma City that would hold up to 1,500 people a little more than a mile from an elementary school and a Pentecostal church.

A third location, previously an auto parts distribution center in Chester, New York, became so unbearably hot during summer months that two people who used to work there said it was akin to being stuck inside an aluminum shed.

Those are a few of the logistical and humanitarian concerns raised by residents and local officials in some of the 23 towns where U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to convert industrial buildings into detention centers that, combined, would hold up to 80,000 people. ICE has offered few details about its plan since The Washington Post first reported on it last month.
As specific sites have surfaced in news reports, people in those communities have taken steps to block the projects.



Comment on this Article Via Your Disqus Account