Medical neglect at ICE detention centers
Hundreds of detainees in at least 33 states allege in federal lawsuits that the facilities are failing to provide adequate medical care, according to an investigation by KFF Health News and The Associated Press.
Detainees say they didn’t get medications on time, or at all, for conditions including high blood pressure, diabetes, depression, epilepsy, Parkinson’s, HIV, cancer and infections.
KFF and AP say there isn’t a comprehensive, publicly available dataset of medical complaints by those in ICE custody. So they analyzed thousands of court cases filed since President Trump’s second inauguration that use a legal route known as habeas corpus to argue that people are being held illegally by ICE. In those documents, detained people sometimes describe the way ICE is handling their medical needs. Reporters also interviewed more than 50 detainees, their family members and lawyers.
The more than 300 medical neglect claims found in the investigation represent a fraction of the problem, say KFF and AP. The details of habeas corpus cases often are hidden because of a federal rule barring the public from viewing such documents online. KFF and AP obtained some documents directly and received records on 4,400 cases from Habeas Dockets, a project of the nonprofit Immigration Justice Transparency Initiative. But tens of thousands more are largely inaccessible, KFF and AP say.
Some judges have written that the habeas corpus process isn’t the way to raise allegations of medical neglect and have declined to release detainees over those claims. Not every detainee who believes they’ve experienced medical neglect files a habeas petition or cites their medical issues if they do.
The administration’s mass deportation effort has swept up hundreds of thousands of people during routine immigration check-ins, at traffic stops, at their homes, in hospitals.
More than 75,000 immigrants were being detained by ICE as of mid-January, up from around 40,000 a year earlier.
About 70 percent of the detainees have no criminal conviction, and their immigration proceedings are civil, not criminal.
ICE custody is deadlier than it’s been in two decades, researchers wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association in April. The Department of Homeland Security reported that 51 people had died in detention since the start of Trump’s second administration, with suicides spiking to an unprecedented number.
Dora Schriro, who worked for ICE and now is a special adviser to the American Bar Association, says case law requires the government to treat people in immigration detention with the same care as those in traditional jails awaiting trial. But administrators have discretion and medical care standards vary.
KFF and AP say they asked DHS to respond to the findings six days before publication, but it didn’t provide comment. The department’s acting chief medical officer, Sean Conley, previously said “it is both policy and longstanding practice for aliens to receive timely and appropriate medical care from the moment they enter ICE custody” and that DHS recruits healthcare professionals to maintain high standards. “This is better, more responsive healthcare than many aliens have ever received in their entire lives.”
Here is more on the methodology of the investigation.
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