Sandra Esqueda, a former Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainee, during an interview.
In April 2020, Esqueda was driving home from a family vacation when she was stopped at an immigration checkpoint in New Mexico. Rosa De Jong, a paralegal at Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, worked to get Esqueda out of detention: “I knew she was going to get it,” De Jong said. “I just didn’t know if I could get her out before she got it.”
On the kitchen table at her parents’ home, Nataly Garcia placed a biomedical bag containing items from her mother’s locker, given to her by CoreCivic. Inside it — a time capsule of the pandemic and her mother’s career at the company — a makeup-stained homemade mask, an employee of the month certificate and a “Get Well Soon” letter from her co-workers, among other items.
CoreCivic is facing at least three lawsuits from former employees who claim that the company put them at risk by failing to follow basic COVID-19 protocols. The company has denied the claims. The company also declined to comment on the specific circumstances of Blanca Garcia’s death, but said it found no indication that she contracted the virus at work., a Frio County commissioner“But then the cases started coming in only at the detention center,” said Jose Asuncion, a county commissioner.