U.S. immigration officials have imposed quarantines and stopped all movement inside an family detention facility in Texas after two measles cases were confirmed among detainees there, a Department of Homeland Security official said on Monday.
The Dilley Immigration Processing Center, also called the South Texas Family Residential Center, is about 70 miles south of San Antonio and is currently the main detention center in the country that houses families, including young children. It is not clear whether the measles cases affected children or adults.
The two cases were confirmed on Saturday, and health services personnel from Immigration and Customs Enforcement immediately took steps to control the spread of the infection, including by quarantining everyone suspected of making contact with the infected, according to Tricia McLaughlin, a homeland security spokeswoman.
The incidents bring together two of the most contentious issues of President Trump’s second term: his aggressive effort to deport undocumented immigrants and the rise of measles as his health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., installs vaccine skeptics in the government. Measles outbreaks hit West Texas and New Mexico last year, before infecting hundreds of children in South Carolina this winter.
Those outbreaks may now be colliding with immigration sweeps that have sent detainees around the country to the huge detention facilities in Texas. About 70,000 people are in detention across the United States, with nearly 18,000 of them in Texas. That total is up from the 40,000 detained before Mr. Trump took office last January.
The Dilley facility has come under particular scrutiny after a 5-year-old Ecuadorean boy, Liam Conejo Ramos, was held there with his father after they were arrested outside their home in Columbia Heights, a Minneapolis suburb, on Jan. 22. Images of their apprehension circulated widely and prompted outrage across the Twin Cities. Inside the facility, detainees protested.
A federal judge demanded their release, and both were back home in Minnesota on Sunday.
The measles cases are raising concerns from medical professionals such as Dr. Lee C. Rogers, the chief of podiatry at the University of Texas at San Antonio, who warned of a possible epidemic if the highly contagious virus is not controlled. Dr. Rogers said in an email that he had written a letter to the Texas Department of State Health Services to recommend that state and local health authorities establish a “single public health incident command.”
“This has the potential to overwhelm local health resources,” Dr. Rogers warned the state health agency.
A measles outbreak last year hospitalized nearly 100 people and killed two young children in West Texas. That outbreak, which spread to other states in the Southwest, was the largest since the United States had declared the disease eliminated in 2000. State health officials said that outbreak was officially over in August, after no new cases had been reported for more than 42 days.
In detention facilities, Dr. Rogers wrote in his letter, “the public health emergency is more dire than a typical outbreak because congregate detention creates near-universal exposure risk.”
Chris Van Deusen, a spokesman for the Texas Department of State Health Services, said the department knew of the cases and was assisting ICE by providing measles doses the agency had requested. He said he believed the two cases were no longer infectious.
Ms. McLaughlin, the homeland security spokeswoman, said that medical staff members were monitoring the detainees’ condition and that everyone in detention was receiving proper medical care.
On Jan. 21, the Arizona Public Health Department confirmed an active measles case of a Mexican national detained at the Florence Detention Center in Arizona, a homeland security spokeswoman said in a separate statement.
On Monday, a spokeswoman for the Pinal County Public Health Services District, where the Florence facility is, said there were three measles cases in the county involving individuals in federal custody. Jassmin Castro, the spokeswoman, said the individuals were recovering and did not require hospitalization. She declined to share which facility they are in.
Pooja Salhotra covers breaking news across the United States.
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