San Francisco, April 8 (RHC)-- In the U.S. city of San Francisco, protesters encircled the headquarters of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in their cars, demanding that officials expedite the release of people held in immigration jails. 

Valeria Suárez of the California Immigrant Youth Justice Alliance read a letter from prisoners at the Mesa Verde ICE processing center.  The letter reads: “Detention is a death sentence, because this pandemic requires social distancing, and that is impossible in this environment. … All it takes is one person to have the virus, and we will all be infected in this Petri dish.  We request and demand that you give us parole, bond or bargain, so that we may return to our families, especially during this pandemic and the strain we could have on an already stressed medical system.”

Meanwhile, Reuters reports the Donald Trump administration has rapidly deported nearly 400 migrant children captured at the U.S.-Mexico border over the past two weeks.  The children are among some 7,000 asylum seekers who’ve been expelled to Mexico since March 21, when Trump suspended standard immigration proceedings in order to speed up deportations.