COVID-19 IMPACTS ON IMMIGRATION DETENTION: GLOBAL RESPONSES IMMIGRATION DETENTION IN SAUDI ARABIA DURING COVID-19: A CASE-STUDY ON THE TREATMENT OF ETHIOPIAN MIGRANTS Saudi Arabia introduced measures to limit the spread of COVID-19 beginning in March 2020, including suspending religious pilgrimages and halting international and domestic travel. On March 30, King Salman announced that everyone in Saudi Arabia would be entitled to medical care for COVID-19 regardless of their legal status in the country.1 Infections remained low throughout March but began to spike in April and May. Despite government efforts to limit the spread of the coronavirus, Saudi Arabia had nearly 330,000 confirmed infections and 4,485 deaths as of mid-September 2020. 2 The spike was seemingly driven by transmission among foreign migrant workers. In April, the Saudi Center for Disease Prevention and Control issued new guidelines to prohibit overcrowding in migrant housing. 3 On May 5, the health minister announced that non-Saudis made up 76 percent of new cases recorded in Saudi Arabia. 4 Saudi authorities released 250 immigration detainees in March but has not otherwise addressed the risks of locking large numbers of migrants in detention centers. The United Nations has called for alternatives to immigration detention during the pandemic, 5 given the increased risk of contracting the novel coronavirus in the crowded and unhygienic conditions in most detention sites. But in Saudi Arabia, the detention of migrants during the COVID-19 pandemic has continued. And while it is difficult to find out what is happening inside those centers, a recent Human Rights Watch report indicates that the precautions and treatment for COVID-19 are minimal. ETHIOPIAN MIGRANTS IN SAUDI ARABIA An unpublished 2019 study6 found that over 90 percent of the migrants passing through Yemen to reach Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries for work opportunities come from Ethiopia. A combination of factors, including economic difficulties, drought, and human rights abuses have driven hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians to migrate over the past decade, most traveling irregularly by boat over the Red Sea and then by land through Yemen to Saudi Arabia. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimated that nearly 140,000 migrants arrived in Yemen in 2019. The detention of migrants in deplorable facilities in Saudi Arabia is a longstanding problem. In 2014, Ethiopian nationals in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, told Human Rights Watch that thousands of foreign workers were being held in makeshift detention facilities without adequate food and shelter before being deported. 8 In 2019, Human Rights Watch identified approximately 10 prisons and detention centers where migrants were held for various periods.9 While deportations from Saudi Arabia to Ethiopia have been ongoing during the pandemic, the sheer numbers of Ethiopian migrants across the world who want to return makes it very difficult for Ethiopia to receive and process its nationals in quarantine in the capital, Addis Ababa10. SAUDI ARABIA’S DETENTION OF ETHIOPIAN MIGRANTS DURING THE PANDEMIC In April 2020, while most countries were in the middle of nationwide lockdowns, the Houthi armed group forcibly expelled thousands of Ethiopian migrants from northern Yemen using the COVID-19 pandemic as a pretext, forcing them to the Saudi border and killing dozens. Saudi border guards then fired on the fleeing migrants, killing dozens more, while hundreds of survivors escaped to a mountainous border area. Ethiopian migrants told Human Rights Watch that after they spent days stranded without food or water, Saudi officials allowed hundreds to enter the country. The Saudis then arbitrarily detained hundreds if not thousands of Ethiopian migrants for months in unsanitary and abusive facilities without the ability to legally challenge their detention or eventual deportation to Ethiopia.11 The three prisons most often cited by detained Ethiopian migrants among the 10 detention centers that 12 Human Rights Watch identified in 2019 were Jizan Central Prison in Jizan city, the Shmeisi Detention Center east of Jeddah, where migrants are processed for deportation, and a center near the town of al-Dayer in Jizan province along the border. Migrants who cross irregularly into Saudi Arabia usually do so in the mountainous border area separating Yemen’s Saada governorate and Saudi Arabia’s Jizan province. Many are apprehended crossing the border or in the country’s interior. About 260,000 Ethiopians, an average of 10,000 per month, were deported from Saudi Arabia to Ethiopia between May 2017 and March 2019, according to IOM. 7 1 https://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/gulf/2020/03/30/Coronavirus-Saudi-s-King-Salman-orders-treatment-for-all-including-visa-violators.html 2 https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html 3 https://www.ft.com/content/c24262f1-2f13-4432-9eda-6ec5622f72e7 4 https://twitter.com/SaudiMOH/status/1257676389538566145/photo/1 5 https://migrationnetwork.un.org/sites/default/files/docs/un_network_on_migration_wg_atd_policy_brief_covid-19_and_immigration_detention_0.pdf 6 https://reliefweb.int/report/yemen/journey-africa-yemen-remains-world-s-busiest-maritime-migration-route 7 https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/08/15/ethiopians-abused-gulf-migration-route 8 https://www.hrw.org/report/2014/05/25/yemens-torture-camps/abuse-migrants-human-traffickers-climate-impunity#_ftn187 9 https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/08/15/ethiopians-abused-gulf-migration-route 10 https://www.iom.int/news/iom-ethiopia-assists-hundreds-returning-migrants-covid-19-quarantine-sites 11 https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/08/13/yemen-houthis-kill-expel-ethiopian-migrants 12 https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/08/15/ethiopians-abused-gulf-migration-route 42 International Detention Coalition and Western Sydney University