by Alex Meneses Miyashita
Robert Menéndez
Congressional leaders, civil rights and religious advocates are building up pressure to ensure that immigrant detainees receive basic and critical medical care that they claim is often not provided to them at federal detention centers.
They maintain that several immigrants held under custody at Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities have died as a result of inadequate or lack of medical treatment since the agency was created in 2003.
The American Civil Liberties Union cites long treatment delays, denied medications and refusal of referrals as part of the “gross medical neglect” of detainee care, as documented in the facility of Otay Mesa, near San Diego. The facility now faces a lawsuit from the organization.
Members of both chambers of Congress are trying to move through a bill that would address this issue. The Detainee Basic Medical Care Act of 2008 would require compliance with basic medical care standards and create some oversight of ICE. Sen. Robert Menéndez (D-N.J.), sponsor of the bill in the upper chamber, said he would seek existing ‘vehicles” to attach the bill in order to ensure it gets a vote before the end of this Congress.
In addition, Menéndez said he would meet with the heads of the Department of Homeland Security and ICE to discuss an issue the senator said could be dealt with administratively to a large degree.
“A detention should never amount to a death sentence,” he said, adding that such “neglectful treatment” of immigrants, regardless of their legal status, should not be tolerated.
Menéndez called the medical treatment found in immigrant detention centers “atrocious.”
One of the most showcased stories is that of Salvadoran immigrant Francisco Castaneda, who received such inadequate medical care for penile lesions while detained in 2006 that it led to terminal penile cancer his attorneys claimed could have been prevented.
Care delays and refusals by federal authorities sealed Castañeda’s fate. While detained for 11 months, biopsies ordered by on-site medical personnel were denied by off-site officials. After 11 months he was released, but his cancer was so advanced, his penis had to be amputated. But the cancer had already spread elsewhere. He died at age 36.
The Washington Post estimates that 83 immigrant detainees have died since the agency’s opening in March 2003 to March 2008. ICE is currently not required to report or keep track of these deaths. The bill would impose the requirement upon the agency.
ICE spokesperson Richard Rocha said that “while every death is an unfortunate occurrence,” the agency “goes to great measures to ensure that our detainees are provided adequate health care.”
Rocha pointed out ICE has held nearly 1.5 million individuals since 2003, and stated that the proportion of deaths is “dramatically lower” for ICE detainees than for the U.S. prison population.
The agency spends nearly $100 million annually on detainee health care and has spent tens of thousands of dollars to pay for necessary medical procedures, such as a coronary bypass, he added Rocha said all detainees are medically screened once they are in ICE custody, and added the agency has about 700 trained medical personnel throughout its facilities. The agency will work with outside medical professionals if necessary.
The ACLU maintains there are “serious systemic problems” with the medical care policies and procedures of ICE, such as requiring on-site medical personnel to obtain off-site authorization to perform specialty services such as a biopsy—the same bureaucratic procedure that cost Castaneda his life. Hispanic Link.
