Undocumented Detainees And Children In Cages Have Been Forgotten During The COVID-19 Pandemic In The U.S., President Trump Should Release Them Now

All non-violent undocumented immigrants detained including children in cages by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, private prisons and private run detention centers should be released by Trump during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis.

By H. Nelson Goodson

Hispanic News Network U.S.A.

March 20, 2020

Washington, D.C. - Since the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic breakout, no effort has been made by Trump to release all non-violent undocumented immigrants including children held in cages being detained by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), private prisons and detention centers around the country and Texas as a health safety measure to keep them from being infected as well. According to the mainstream media, a medical staff employee at the ICE private detention center operated by CoreCivic in Elizabeth, New Jersey has tested COVID-19 positive. At least 195 undocumented detainees are currently at the facility, which has a capacity to hold 300. No confirmation has been released whether undocumented detainees at the facility had been infected with the deadly virus.

Most Americans are preoccupied by their own fate and dilemma of being out of work during the COVID-19 pandemic. The U.S. Congress, Trump and state governors around the U.S. are working to provide resources, pay checks, unemployment compensation and economic aid to most U.S. citizens, small businesses and legal status citizens living in the U.S., but it seems that the undocumented workers in the U.S. who have paid billions of dollars in federal taxes including millions of dollars in state taxes, since after the former President Ronald Regan Amnesty passed, but actually don't file for a tax reimbursement, but by no fault of their own have become the vulnerable and forgotten taxpayers by the U.S. Congress and Trump who are paid by the same tax dollars the IRS and states have collected from the undocumented taxpayers.

The undocumented taxpayers have contributed more than 

Former President George W. Bush and former President Barack H. Obama were able to tab into the suspended IRS account of billions of tax dollars that undocumented workers paid to the IRS and the millions of dollars paid in combined taxes to states without filing yearly tax refunds, which the country was actually bailed out during the recession in early 2016.

Statistics:

Each non-criminal undocumented immigrant detained and later removed from a community will create an economic gap of about $25k to $50k in earned income including personal, sales tax, consumption of goods and property tax generated loss annually. Also, it will cost the state and the U.S. government approximately up to $10K or more in deportation costs including holding the undocumented inmate at a local county jail or Private Prison Corporations (PPC), which costs between $130 to $330 per day to hold at a PPC, in addition immigration court costs and flight costs to country of orgin.

Obama during the end of his term attempted to phase out private prisons when contracts expired, but Trump's U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions recinded that memo and is promoting to continue to contract with PPCs. According to a 2015 report by the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, PPC's earned $3B for holding ICE detainees. An estimated 34,000 of undocumented immigrants are incarcerated daily costing about $159 each to hold.

So, the U.S. economic stability in some urban and rural communities, which depend on undocumented labor including farm and dairy workers are faced with a loss of workers that can't easily be replaced once removed by the Trump's ICE initiative. Does Trump and his administration know that every non-criminal undocumented immigrant removed from the local and the U.S. economic system has a long lasting effect in the areas from which removed?

• In Wisconsin, undocumented immigrants paid $21,7 million in personal income, $6.1 million in property taxes and $66.5 million in sale taxes in 2010 totaling at least $94.4M, according to the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy study.

• Undocumented workers in Texas pay $11.6B annually in taxes, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

• Undocumented immigrants paid $35B within 10 years to the Medicare Trust Fund even when they don't qualify for benefits. (HNNUSA/Hispanic News Network U.S.A.)

• The Social Security Administration reported that in the Earning Suspense File has $1.3T in taxes in earn wages, which most of it was collected from undocumented immigrants.  (The Atlantic)

• In 2014, Stephen Goss, the Chief Actuary of the Social Security Administration told Vice News that in the last decade, an estimated 11M undocumented immigrants reside in the U.S. and about 7M are unauthorized workers and 3.1M of those worked with fake or expired Social Security numbers and paid automatic payroll taxes to the federal government. In 2010, a $13B annual net contribution was made to the Social Security Trust Fund.

In the last ten years (2017), unauthorized workers have paid an estimated $100B into the trust fund and most of the unauthorized workers will never benefit from their tax contributions later in life, according to Goss.  (HNNUSA/Hispanic News Network U.S.A.)