Durbin, Duckworth, Bustos sound alarm about federal inmate transfer after outbreak at Chicago facility
The prisoners should have been tested for COVID-19 before leaving the Metropolitcan Correctional Center in the Loop, the Democratic elected officials said in a statement.
Three Illinois lawmakers sounded an alarm Friday over the transfer of at least 20 inmates from the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago, grappling with a COVID-19 outbreak, to a federal prison in northwest Illinois which has no confirmed cases.
Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth, and Rep. Cheri Bustos — all Illinois Democrats — said the Federal Bureau of Prisons should not have sent the prisoners to the facility in Thomson, Ill., without taking more safeguards.
The prisoners should have been tested for COVID-19 before leaving the MCC, they said. The Chicago Sun-Times reported earlier this month about how coronavirus infections appears to be spreading among the more than 600 inmates in the downtown high-rise prison.
https://chicago.suntimes.com/politics/2020/4/24/21235406/illinois-durbin-duckworth-bustos-coronavirus-federal-prisons-inmate-transfer?fbclid=IwAR1AzRqNold0smjRfQ4Pg-nUGjlP-gSwsUtOS-3VuRKbYzYdHx5L60c93ZM