Professor Enid Trucios-Haynes pushes for federal government to release immigration detainees during pandemic

Professor Enid Trucios-Haynes

Professor Enid Trucios-Haynes, a nationally respected immigration law scholar and co-founder and co-director of Louisville Law's Brandeis Human Rights Advocacy Program, has joined with other lawyers and academics to push for the release of immigration detainees during the coronavirus pandemic.

She is a signatory, along with Professor Jamie Abrams (co-founder of the Human Rights Advocacy Program) and Professor Ariana Levinson, as well as hundreds of other legal academics, of a letter to the Department of Homeland Security urging it to "release detainees in all immigration detention facilities across the country in order to prevent the further spread of the COVID-19 virus."

"We also write to urge DHS, in partnership with ICE and CBP, to inform the public of their plan to respond to actual and highly likely outbreaks of COVID-19 in the facilities," the letter states.

Trucios-Haynes has been involved in similar letters:

• She helped draft a letter from the ACLU of Kentucky, Kentucky Refugee Ministries, Maxwell Street Clinic, Neighbors Immigration Clinic and Catholic Charities of Louisville urging DHS to "take decisive action to protect detainees, ICE officers, detention facility staff, and the families of those staff, from COVD-19."
• She is a signatory on letters to Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear on behalf of the Cooperative Consortium for Transdisciplinary Social Justice Research urging them to release more incarcerated individuals