Giving Compass' Take:

• Seth M. Holmes, Miriam Magaña López, and Vera L. Chang explain that ICE is continuing to conduct raids during the COVID-19 pandemic, using essential supplies and threatening essential services. 

• How can funders work to protect essential workers and ensure supplies go where they are needed most? 

• Read about the impact of COVID-19 on seasonal farmworkers. 

In this episode of Who Belongs? we look at the reality facing undocumented immigrants and migrant farmworkers in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. We hear from three researchers who discuss some of their recent and upcoming articles that look at ICE raids targeting immigrant communities despite shelter-in-place orders, as well as the conditions of farmworkers who are putting themselves at risk in order to keep the country fed.

Marc Abizeid: I guess this will be for Seth and Miriam. You just had this article recently come out in the Guardian and there's going to be another version that's coming out soon in the American Journal of Public Health that looks at ICE raids and you show why these raids undermine public health and so maybe you can just begin telling us a little bit about that article and what you're arguing there.

Miriam Magaña López: Yeah, so I would say that the main argument is that ICE raids are not essential during this time. We're being told by local, state and federal government to stay home and to limit movement and the fact that ICE is still going to communities, looking for people and then moving them from their homes into a crowded detention facility is not conducive to controlling the spread of COVID-19 and the reason that we actually got started writing this article was because I saw that on March 20th, ICE actually bid for 45,095 masks, which are the masks that healthcare providers don't have to protect themselves as they're treating patients and through a quick exchange and emails that suggested that we write this article just because we found it to be super unjust that this organization that is conducting nonessential work during this time feels like they should get these masks for their workers when healthcare providers weren't even having them on the first place.

Read the full article interview with Seth M. Holmes, Miriam Magaña López, and Vera L. Chang about ICE raids during COVID-19 at Othering & Belonging Institute.