Records from U.S. Customs and Border Protection in response to American Oversight’s request for directives concerning the coronavirus pandemic. These records include documents from March 2020. Details on the contents of theses records are below.

In the Documents

March 12, 2020: An individual whose name has been redacted wrote, “CRCL [the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties] has an employee [who] has been ill for almost two weeks and [has been] coming into the office. He went to his doctor and was told that they are not yet conducting testing in VA. Cameron [Quinn] learned this yesterday and instructed him to self-quarantine as of today.” 

March 18, 2020: CRCL officer Cameron Quinn sent an announcement instructing the office that they should expect to telework. She forwarded this message to a set of people whose names have been redacted, saying, “We may ask for help w/ coordination on a couple issues if we have any trouble, but have figured out how to ratchet back even more than our original minimal non-telework.”

March 22, 2020: Quinn sent an email to a redacted group of recipients with the subject line “4 new folks self-quarantining.” The next day, Quinn followed up, “To be clear the 4 are now self-monitoring, not self-quarantining.”

March 23, 2020: Quinn sent an email to Tyler Houlton, the deputy chief of staff at DHS, and others regarding a report from CNN that doctors had warned of an “imminent risk to the health and safety of immigrant detainees.” Quinn wrote: “Some of you will recall our August 2018 whistleblowing situation involving a former CRCL employee and 2 SME [subject matter expert] doctors who assist Compliance with onsite investigations (mostly at ICE detention centers). At that point the issue was family separation.” She added, “One of those 2 doctors, along with a new doctor is ‘whistleblowing’ again per the article below. This time they are advocating releasing most, if not all, detainees in advance of COVID-19 spreading in detention facilities.”