House Homeland Security Chairman Bennie Thompson is asking the Bureau of Prisons for details about whether corrections officials who helped to staff the Washington, D.C., protests have been quarantined or tested for coronavirus before returning to their day jobs.
Rep. Bennie Thompson, who joined with Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, Rep. Jamie Raskin and Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), notes that some Bureau of Prisons officials deployed to the protest response — part of a display of force demanded by President Donald Trump — hailed from the FCI-Petersburg prison, the site of a significant coronavirus outbreak in Hopewell, Va., yet were seen without wearing masks.
Pictures accompanying the letter include an image of an officer in riot gear with an FCI-Petersburg patch on his left shoulder.
“On June 9, 2020, members of DC National Guard who responded to the protests tested positive for COVID-19, according to military representatives, raising concerns about BOP and other personnel who responded to the protests,” the lawmakers write in the letter addresses to Bureau of Prisons Director Michael Carvajal.
They’re asking for details by June 17 about which facilities sent officers to the protest responses in Washington and Miami, what the state of the coronavirus outbreak is in those facilities and whether those deployed are required to be tested and take a 14-day quarantine before returning to prisons, many of which have been notorious hotbeds of coronavirus outbreak. The lawmakers also want to know if the officers were tested before being deployed to the protests.
The Democrats are also asking, by July 1, for an update on the rate of coronavirus generally among Bureau of Prisons staff.