Immigrants and Medical Neglect Part I

Considering how much hate mail newspapers get when they run sympathetic articles on undocumented immigrants, it is interesting that the Washington Post has decided to invest in such a detailed study on medical care for immigrants in detention.

It reminds me of the Rev. Wright's comment on how AIDS was spread by conspiracy in the U.S. - he stated that the U.S. Government made a decision to do this. In the case of immigrants and medical neglect in detention centers, there was probably no secret meeting somewhere where DHS officials consciously decided to let so many people go without proper medical care. Trouble is, that consciously or un-consciously people are still dying.

If you die from lack of medical care you are just as dead as if you had been murdered. Michel Foucault, who wrote extensively on crime, philosophy, and history said it is not the intention motivating an action that counts - it is the final result of an action.


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System of Neglect

As Tighter Immigration Policies Strain Federal Agencies, The Detainees in Their Care Often Pay a Heavy Cost

by Dana Priest and Amy Goldstein | Washington Post Staff Writers

Page A1; May 11, 2008

for video on series by Goldstein and Priest click here

Near midnight on a California spring night, armed guards escorted Yusif Osman into an immigration prison ringed by concertina wire at the end of a winding, isolated road.

During the intake screening, a part-time nurse began a computerized medical file on Osman, a routine procedure for any person entering the vast prison network the government has built for foreign detainees across the country. But the nurse pushed a button and mistakenly closed file #077-987-986 and marked it "completed" -- even though it had no medical information in it.

Three months later, at 2 in the morning on June 27, 2006, the native of Ghana collapsed in Cell 206 at the Otay Mesa immigrant detention center outside San Diego. His cellmate hit the intercom button, yelling to guards that Osman was on the floor suffering from chest pains. A guard peered through the window into the dim cell and saw the detainee on the ground, but did not go in. Instead, he called a clinic nurse to find out whether Osman had any medical problems...


for complete WP article click here