A federal court overturned a lower court order this week that required immigration officials to monitor and even release detained illegal immigrants at risk of COVID-19 infections.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a previous injunction forcing Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to release certain detainees due to the pandemic was an overreach.
“That the plaintiffs and district court may have desired more detainees be released, and on a potentially quicker basis, does not mean that the government’s approach—which involved early release determinations—reflected reckless disregard on a national basis,” Judge Daniel Bress wrote in the ruling.
Bress also argued the order lacks sufficient justification since ICE officials had already been going out of their way since the spring of 2020 to enact policies that took into consideration the risk of COVID-19 that many detained migrants might face.
“Like many aspects of government that were potentially unprepared for a highly contagious airborne virus, ICE’s initial response to the Covid-19 pandemic may have been imperfect, even at times inadequate,” Bress wrote.
“But the slew of national guidance, directives, and mandatory requirements that the agency issued and then frequently updated in the spring of 2020 belies the notion that ICE acted with the ‘reckless disregard’ necessary to support a finding of unconstitutional, system-wide deliberate indifference,” he added.
The injunction in question was issued by U.S. District Judge Jesus Bernal, an Obama appointee, who decided ICE’s COVID-19 policies fell short of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendations and took it upon himself to dictate how migrant detention facilities should be run.
Bress called the injunction a “sweeping” and “far-reaching intrusion.”
“Neither the facts nor the law supported a judicial intervention of that magnitude,” he said.
