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May 15, 2008
Secretary Michael Chertoff
U.S. Department of Homeland Security
3801 Nebraska Ave. NW
Washington, D.C. 20528
Dear Secretary Chertoff:
We, the undersigned organizations, are writing to express our continued and serious concerns regarding the provision of medical care to immigration detainees. Based on conversations with detainees, service providers across the country and personnel in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), we have identified several areas where we believe the provision of medical services must be dramatically improved.
First, we are deeply concerned that the Division of Immigration Health Services’ (DIHS) stated mission does not comport with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Detention Standard on Medical Care and established principles of constitutional and international law. The ICE Detention Standard appropriately requires that detainees “have access to medical services that promote detainee health and general well-being.” Yet by its own terms, the DIHS Covered Services Package primarily provides health care services for emergency care, defined as “a condition that is threatening to life, limb, hearing, or sight.” The services package treats pre-existing conditions differently from those that develop during detention, and ties treatment decisions regarding conditions that cause deterioration in health or uncontrolled suffering to ICE’s ability to effectuate deportation. In addition, documents released by the Washington Post reveal that at least one DIHS medical director identifies DIHS’s mission as that of “keeping the detainee medically ready for deportation.” This view was recently reinforced by Gary Mead, Acting Director of Detention and Removal Operations, on National Public Radio, when he questioned whether additional medical care must be provided once DIHS has ensured that a detainee is “medically capable of being removed.” The position of the DIHS medical director and Gary Mead demonstrate how inconsistent DIHS’s mission is with proper standards of care and ICE’s own standards....
Signed by the following organizations:
American Civil Liberties Union
American Immigration Lawyers Association
Amnesty International USA
Asian American Justice Center
Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc.
Human Rights Watch
National Immigration Law Center
Physicians for Human Rights
Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children
cc: Julie Myers, Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement
Daniel Sutherland, Officer for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties
Richard Skinner, Inspector General
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