Coronavirus is Keeping Prison Families From Saying Their Last Goodbyes

Last Monday, María Felícitas Infante Zamora and her siblings heard from Texas prison officials that their father, Bartolo Infante, had died. Infante, 72, had been in prison since 2000 for a sexual assault.

The family did not learn the cause of death directly from officials: They only learned that he had tested positive for COVID-19 from a news article they came across on Facebook days later.

Then came another blow. Infante’s relatives could not afford to hold their own funeral, so the Texas Department of Criminal Justice said it would bury him at a prison cemetery. But the family would not be able to attend the burial because gatherings put people at increased risk of contracting or spreading the virus.

“They said, ‘We’re just going to give you a picture of him and that’s it,’” Zamora said. The picture would be of her father’s body at his funeral on Thursday.

Infante was incarcerated in the Telford Unit, near the Arkansas border, but will be buried at a prison cemetery in