Whistleblowers Accuse Biden HHS: ‘Every Effort’ Used To Downplay COVID Spread In Migrant Children Facilities

Two whistleblowers have accused the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) of allowing COVID-19 to rampantly spread throughout detention centers housing migrant children, and then using “every effort” to downplay the level of infection in the facilities.

Arthur Pearlstein, Director of Arbitration and of the Office of Shared Neutrals at the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS), and Lauren Reinhold, an Attorney-Advisor at the Social Security Administration (SSA), served as volunteer detailees at the Fort Bliss Emergency Intake Site near El Paso, Texas, from April through June 2021.

The two whistleblowers stated in their complaint, “COVID was widespread among children and eventually spread to many employees. Hundreds of children contracted COVID in overcrowded conditions. Adequate masks were not consistently provided to children, nor was their use consistently enforced. Every effort was made to downplay the degree of COVID infection at the site, and the size of the outbreak was deliberately kept under wraps.”

“At a ‘town hall’ meeting with detailees, a senior U.S. Public Health Service manager was asked and refused to say how many were infected because ‘if that graph [of infections] is going to The Washington Post every day, it’s the only thing we’ll be dealing with and politics will take over, the perception will take over, and we’re about reality, not perception,’” the complaint continued.  “All the manager would acknowledge is that several children had to be hospitalized.”

“The manager also dismissed a detailee’s concern that the children in the COVID tents were wearing basic disposable masks instead of N95 masks,” the complaint added.  “The manager said N95 masks were unnecessary for the infected – even though uninfected detailees were working with the infected children.”

According to data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, there have been over 20,000 cases of COVID-19 among ICE detainees and nearly 1,300 cases are currently in custody.  In a letter sent last month to the Biden administration, three doctors warned that detention centers “continue to be a significant source of spread for COVID and disproportionate harm to detainees, workers and the public, yet DHS has still not implemented a comprehensive plan to address the spread of COVID in immigration detention facilities.”