Immigrants are no longer being detained at the notorious Georgia facility currently the focus of a federal investigation for medical abuses against detained women. While Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Sec. Alejandro Mayorkas said in May that it would be terminating the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) contract for the private Irwin County Detention Center (ICDC), last month, advocates revealed that immigrants continued to be imprisoned there.

But now, in a major victory for advocates who for years have pushed for Irwin’s permanent closure, there are no more immigrants remaining at the LaSalle Corrections operated facility. Roughly 40 were moved from the detention site last week, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. “All ICE detainees have been removed from the facility,” Irwin Warden David Paulk said in the report. “Yesterday morning, we grouped them up for removal.”

Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) Southeast Immigrant Freedom Initiative lead attorney Maura Finn said the “actions reflect a promise to ensure an immigrant held in detention will not be subject to abuse at ICDC,” but expressed disappointment that instead of just releasing detained immigrants—which ICE has every ability to do—officials instead transferred detained immigrants to other facilities.

This is not exactly the best public health move during an ongoing pandemic. Furthermore, some detained immigrants were sent to sites that also hold abusive human rights records.

“Transferring people from Irwin to yet another abusive facility, like the Stewart Detention Center which has had among the highest number of deaths in the country, directly contradicts Secretary Mayorkas’ pledge,” Finn said. In announcing the termination of Irwin’s contract back in May, Mayorkas had said the Biden administration would “not tolerate the mistreatment of individuals in civil immigration detention or substandard conditions of detention.” But as Tina Vasquez reported for Prism in Feb., “medically vulnerable immigrants detained at Stewart were subject to excessive force by guards, including incidents in which guards removed disabled immigrants from wheelchairs and ‘hurled’ them onto the floor.”

“It is even more troubling that some people, including medically vulnerable individuals, are being sent from facility to facility—particularly amid the latest COVID-19 surges happening around the country, especially in the Southeast,” Finn continued. “This practice flagrantly violates CDC guidance, which limits the transfer of detained individuals to specific circumstances like preventing overcrowding or provision of clinical care.” Finn said ICE is also failing to track particularly vulnerable individuals, “further putting them in harm’s way in this inhumane and unnecessary system of immigrant detention.”

ICE’s irresponsible transfers have directly worsened the caseload within the ICE detention system—just look at the Northwest Detention Center (NWDC) in Tacoma, Washington.

“Since early June, over 240 people have tested positive at the detention center, including nearly two dozen staff members,” advocates said. “The outbreak has occurred only after ICE began to transfer detainees from the southern border to NWDC without first testing them, producing a dangerous situation.” Following a judge’s ruling, ICE must now test detained immigrants for COVID-19 before transferring them to NWDC. That would seem like common sense, of which ICE has a deficiency. 

Meanwhile, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that the federal investigation into Irwin continues as the facility is set to see the end of its ICE contract in just days. The report noted that a local Republican official was supposedly “appalled” over Mayorkas’ announcement, saying Irwin’s “contract is being canceled on September 17th and not one single finding or wrongdoing has been released, not one.” I’ll only comment that, like in the case of the previous president’s stupid and racist border wall, the federal government has the ability to cancel a contract for any damn reason it wants to. It can be expensive, but it can do it—and it should keep canceling ICE agreements, advocates said.

Project South legal and advocacy director Azadeh Shahshahani “called this past week’s development a ‘momentous victory’ that resulted from ‘years of organizing and exposing the violations,’” the report continued. She said that advocates “will not rest until the survivors receive a measure of redress for the pain they suffered, and until all detention centers including Stewart are also shut down.”