COVID-19 began to infect the nation at rapid speed in March, reaching every corner of the country and taking the lives of more than 6,000 people by April 3. The United Nations has dubbed the coronavirus the “most challenging” crisis the globe has witnessed since World War II.
As people across the country are confined to their homes during the COVID-19 pandemic, little attention has been given to a group of people whose health is in danger because they are locked away from the outside world – people in immigrant detention centers.
More than 1,100 people age 65 or older are locked away in Alabama prisons, putting a group already highly susceptible to the deadly COVID-19 virus at an even greater risk, according to an SPLC analysis of the state’s prison system.
In its most recent report on hate groups in the U.S., the Southern Poverty Law Center documented a spike in the number of groups targeting LGBTQ people and promoting dangerous lies and misinformation, particularly about transgender people. Shockingly, the number of those groups rose from 49 in 2018 to 70 last year.
The Rev. Dr. Joseph E. Lowery, who died on Friday at 98 years old, was a longtime friend of the Southern Poverty Law Center and played a leading role in the SPLC’s first lawsuit against the Ku Klux Klan in 1980.
Alabama resident Lee Carroll Brooker garnered national attention in 2016 when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the marijuana trafficking case that put Brooker, in his 70s at the time, in prison for life.
The SPLC and its allies asked a federal court today to issue a preliminary injunction requiring that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) take immediate steps to protect people in its custody, particularly those who have medical conditions making them more susceptible to serious illness and death from COVID-19.
