Nearly 200 Detained Immigrants in Texas Got Mumps — What the Government Has to Say for Itself
Nearly 200 detained immigrants in Texas have been diagnosed with mumps since October — a series of outbreaks one local health official said was due to the population density at such centers and not a reflection of poor standards of care.
A spokeswoman for the state’s Department of State Health Services tells PEOPLE that 186 cases of mumps have been reported in Texas detention facilities beginning in early October. The patients ranged in age from 13 to 66. Five of them were facility employees.
There has been no reported transmission to the broader community, the spokeswoman says.
The exact locations of the mumps cases were unavailable but the spokeswoman says they have been reported in detention facilities across the state — except for the northern tip of Texas.
A spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement says that as of Feb. 13 there were 27 mumps cases in ICE facilities in Texas. “Anecdotally, the number of cases has declined since Feb. 14,” he says, but updated statistics were not immediately available.
There are more than 16,000 detainees in ICE custody in Texas, according to the agency spokesman.
Outside of outbreaks, the DSHS spokeswoman says mumps cases by locations are not routinely tracked by the state health agency.
Mumps is spread through mucus or saliva in a variety of forms: sneezing, coughing, or via a person’s hands left behind on objects such as silverware or doorknobs, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
While most patients recover within a few weeks with manageable symptoms such as fever, muscle aches and swollen salivary glands, mumps can lead to more serious complications such as brain inflammation, deafness and meningitis.
The disease is also easily transmissible before symptoms appear and can still be contagious for days after.
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While mumps was “a universal disease of childhood” in America before the widespread use of mumps vaccination in the mid-’60s, annual cases now number no more than the low thousands, according to the CDC.
In most years since 2000, there have been fewer than 1,000 reported cases nationwide.
There do, however, continue to be outbreaks around the country such as those at the detention centers in Texas.
It was not immediately clear what is causing the most recent spate of cases there, though the Texas Tribune reports that state officials do not know if adults and children who are detained after entering America have been vaccinated. Unaccompanied minors are given vaccinations once in custody and people in custody quickly receive health screenings.
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Vaccine standards and disease exposure varies by country, according to the Tribune.
“Outbreaks have most commonly occurred in places where people have had prolonged, close contact with a person who has mumps,” according to the CDC’s website. There was a massive outbreak in an Arkansas community in 2016 and various smaller outbreaks at college campuses in California, Iowa, Illinois, Maryland and Virginia since 2011.
In the case of seven measles patients reported at an ICE facility in Houston last month, Public Health Authority Dr. David Persse told the Houston Chronicle the people who were first infected were likely already carrying the disease when they were detained.
“Persse attributed mumps’ spread at the ICE detention facility to population density, not any conditions there,” the Chronicle reported last month.
Still, the cases have drawn further scrutiny to the work of ICE in handling detained immigrants and the facilities where immigrants are processed and held.
“You don’t need to be in the facility to know the conditions in there are not quite sanitary and are not equipped to deal with disease,” Dr. Andrea Caracostis, a Houston health clinic CEO, told the Tribune.
“These are contagious diseases; they thrive in places where there’s no proper sanitary management,” Caracostis said.
ICE defended its handling of detainees, telling PEOPLE in part that the agency “strives to ensure people in our care are treated with compassion and we work to get them back to health as quickly as possible while mitigating the spread of this and all diseases. … ICE takes very seriously the health, safety and welfare of those in our care.”
Since taking office in 2017, President Donald Trump has made it a signature policy to crackdown on both legal and illegal immigration.
Trump has emphasized illegal southern border crossings, though the number of border apprehensions — an analog for the amount of illegal immigration from Mexico — is much lower than in the early to mid 2000s, according to available statistics.
