A pregnant mother from Honduras is terrified of getting coronavirus while being held in a family detention center in Dilley, Texas. Her 4-year-old daughter has a severe cough and vomits up to three times a night. They are detained in close quarters with hundreds of other immigrants, have limited access to hand soap or sanitizer, and worry the virus could easily spread.

“I must be close to others all the time,” said the mother in a statement to immigration lawyers, in which she is identified by her initials, O.M.G. “I fear for my life, and the life of my daughter and unborn child.”

On Saturday, a group of immigration lawyers filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security demanding that immigrants be released from family detention centers in the U.S. amid the coronavirus outbreak. They say the cramped conditions, subpar medical care and lack of hygiene make these facilities a “powder keg” for the virus’s spread. And despite the fact that hundreds of detained families say they are showing symptoms tied to COVID-19, detention centers are not testing people for the virus or taking preventive measures, according to the lawsuit. The lawyers say they worry that an outbreak among the detained immigrants would be deadly and spread to people in surrounding communities.

“I’m afraid we’re going to have parents die,” said Bridget Cambria, an immigration lawyer and the director of ALDEA ― the People’s Justice Center, one of the organizations that filed the complaint. “It’s not OK for that to be the thing we wait for.”

DHS did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment. The lawsuit says that officials have “begun to release some families” including pregnant women or people who suffer from asthma, though it does not specify how many.

The U.S. has three family detention centers, two in Texas and one in Pennsylvania, that collectively detain roughly 2,000 immigrants. Social distancing, the best defense so far against the coronavirus, is not a possibility for people who are forced to sleep, eat and use the bathroom in group settings.

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