In Spanish: Worst Immigrant Prisons are in California

Peor prisión migratoria está en CA

Los que ingresan a El Centro no tienen acceso a ningún tipo de ayuda

• Claudia Núñez/ claudia.nunez@laopinion.com |
• 2010-09-20
• | La Opinión

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Informe del Centro Nacional de Justicia para Inmigrantes señala que los reos son deportados sin conocer sus derechos legales.  

 

Con más de 450 reos diarios en sus celdas, la prisión migratoria ubicada en El Centro, California fue catalogada como el mayor presidio de indocumentados en el país sin acceso a organizaciones de ayuda legal, abogados o llamadas telefónicas, según un reporte reciente.
Operada directamente por la Oficina de Control de Inmigración y Aduanas (ICE), los detenidos del Servicio de Procesamiento (SPC) en El Centro son deportados sin conocer sus derechos legales o incluso obtener una llamada telefónica para pedir ayuda legal, indicó la investigación del Centro Nacional de Justicia para Inmigrantes (NIJC)
"Están orillando a la deportación incluso a solicitantes de asilo, refugiados o residentes permanentes por la falta de representación legal" apuntó Claudia Valenzuela, directora asociado del NIJC
La prisión de El Centro es la tercera cárcel migratoria más grande de California.
Su página oficial anuncia tres organizaciones de abogados locales para personas de bajos recursos. La realidad, recalca el estudio, es que la prisión no permite a los prisioneros contacto con organizaciones legales no lucrativas (ONG) o una llamada telefónica con un abogado.
"Las políticas con relación a la comunicación telefónica no estaban claras más allá de la negativa. Como resultado, a las personas confinadas se les impide tener contacto directo con representantes legales o posibles representantes legales", destaca el estudio.La prisión se ubica en el Condado del Valle Imperial, una de las regiones más pobres de California, donde al menos 20 de cada 100 residentes se encuentra desempleado.
El esposo de María González fue procesado en la prisión de El Centro y deportado a México. Su escaso salario como trabajadora de una planta agrícola y la falta de recursos económicos le impidió contratar a un abogado.
"El abogado más barato me cobraba como 700 dólares por el caso, pero sin marido pues apenas alcanzaba para darle de comer a los hijos y lo aventaron pa’ México", comentó González, madre de tres hijos, todos ciudadanos.
La situación empeora conforme las autoridades continúan con una política de detención de inmigrantes a gran escala, recalca el estudio.
ICE detuvo a 383,524 personas en el año fiscal 2009, a un costo promedio de 12 dólares diarios por reo.
"Los detenidos terminan abandonados en centros aislados donde simplemente desaparece en el sistema", apuntó Valenzuela.
La creciente población en las cárceles migratorias no sólo impacta el bolsillo de los contribuyentes, también, sobrepasa los recursos de ayuda legal disponibles.
De las 150 prisiones analizadas por la NIJC (existen cerca de 300 centros migratorios en todo el país) más de una cuarta parte mostró que a cada abogado pro bono le corresponde la defensa de 500 o más presos.
Actualmente sólo existen 102 organizaciones no lucrativas dedicados a su defensa legal. La gran mayoría tienen menos de cinco miembros, resume el estudio, el primero en su tipo.Otro de los retos que frustra a las ONGs es la reciente reubicación de varias cárceles migratorias. Al menos 10 prisiones se encuentran entre 346 y 150 millas de distancia de una ciudad grande."No podemos decir que lo hacen a propósito, pero es preocupante el aislamiento en que están dejando a estas personas", recalcó la especialista.
Para los presos confinados ahí, el teléfono es la única alternativa de recibir asesoría, sin embargo con el caso de El Centro, a casi 6,000 prisioneros no se les permitió llamadas con abogados o trabajadores sociales, revela el reporte.
Virginia Kice portavoz de ICE en California, apuntó que la agencia está comprometida
a permitir que los detenidos tengan acceso a teléfonos y asesoría legal."ICE está trabajando con sus partes interesadas, incluidos el Departamento de Justicia los EEUU y las organizaciones no gubernamentales, para ampliar y apoyar la representación pro bono para aquellos en nuestra custodia", dijo Kice
De las nueves prisiones para indocumentados investigadas por la NIJC en California, sólo la prisión de El Centro presentó críticas carencias.
Valenzuela explicó, que el acceso a un abogado tiene un efecto significativo en los casos de inmigración, por ejemplo, el 41% de las personas detenidas que buscan ser residentes legales y que contaban con un abogado ganaron sus casos, frente al 21% de aquellos sin representación.
En enero del 2009, el Departamento de Justicia decidió que los inmigrantes que enfrentan deportación no tienen derecho a un abogado de oficio y si contratan uno privado deben hacerlo sin que signifique gastos para el gobierno.

Con más de 450 reos diarios en sus celdas, la prisión migratoria ubicada en El Centro, California fue catalogada como el mayor presidio de indocumentados en el país sin acceso a organizaciones de ayuda legal, abogados o llamadas telefónicas, según un reporte reciente.
Operada directamente por la Oficina de Control de Inmigración y Aduanas (ICE), los detenidos del Servicio de Procesamiento (SPC) en El Centro son deportados sin conocer sus derechos legales o incluso obtener una llamada telefónica para pedir ayuda legal, indicó la investigación del Centro Nacional de Justicia para Inmigrantes (NIJC)...link

DHS to stop sending families to HUTTO

A few days ago I was thinking about our current economic crisis. It occurred to me that the government would save billions of dollars if so many undocumented immigrants were not in detention. This group of people are living in contracted detention facilities in the U.S., at the cost of the government. They cannot work since they are incarcerated. Their families who are in the U.S. on the outside are in crisis, often needing costly social services.

Instead, our libraries are closing, plants are closing, unemployment benefits are limited, people are losing their houses because the government can't help them... but I guess that is OK for our government, since they seem to love paying money to private prison camps.... They are saying that the government will take the camps over... so now they will create their own work force to watch the huddled masses that we no longer care about.
If the Statue of Liberty had feelings, I wonder if she would cry to think about all the people in detention. The NYT says over 400,000 people are held in detention per year. 400,000 people.

Maybe this latest policy shift will be an improvement. Detainment camps for undocumented immigrants may get somewhat more comfortable, but they will still be prisons.

---

U.S. to Reform Policy on Detention for Immigrants

By NINA BERNSTEIN

Published: August 5, 2009

...One move starts immediately: the government will stop sending families to the T. Don Hutto Residential Center, a former state prison near Austin, Tex., that drew an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit and scathing news coverage for putting young children behind razor wire.

“We’re trying to move away from ‘one size fits all,’ ” John Morton, who heads the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency as assistant secretary of homeland security, said in an interview on Wednesday. Detention on a large scale must continue, he said, “but it needs to be done thoughtfully and humanely.”

Hutto, a 512-bed center run for profit by the Corrections Corporation of America under a $2.8 million-a-month federal contract, was presented as a centerpiece of the Bush administration’s tough approach to immigration enforcement when it opened in 2006. The decision to stop sending families there — and to set aside plans for three new family detention centers — is the Obama administration’s clearest departure from its predecessor’s immigration enforcement policies...link to complete NYT article

--

AP sources: Feds return to run detention centers

By SUZANNE GAMBOA and EILEEN SULLIVAN

The Associated Press/Washington Post

Thursday, August 6, 2009; 3:01 AM

WASHINGTON -- The Homeland Security Department intends to put federal employees in charge of monitoring the treatment of detainees in the country's largest immigration detention facilities, two years after the government turned that job over to a private company...

link to image

2000 immigrants in detention center meant for 800

Migrants break out of overcrowded Italian facility

By ALESSANDRA RIZZO
The Associated Press/Washington Post
Saturday, January 24, 2009; 11:24 AM

ROME -- Hundreds of migrants and refugees broke out of an overcrowded immigration facility on a Sicilian island Saturday to protest their treatment, authorities said.

About 600 people forced open the gates at the facility and marched toward the center of the island of Lampedusa before making their way back, according officials at the facility and news reports...more

Continued Problems at Detention Centers

Report Faults Treatment of Women Held at Immigration Centers
New York Times

By DAN FROSCH
Published: January 20, 2009
Some 300 women held at immigration detention centers in Arizona face dangerous delays in health care and widespread mistreatment, according to a new study by the University of Arizona, the latest report to criticize conditions at such centers throughout the United States.

The study, which federal immigration officials criticized as narrow and unsubstantiated, was conducted from August 2007 to August 2008 by the Southwest Institute of Research on Women and the James E. Rogers College of Law, both at the University of Arizona. It was released Jan. 13...more

link to summary of reportReport on Women in Detention

Publish at Scribd or explore others:

Narratives about Detention in the U.K.

--

Painful experiences take centre stage


by Alison Benjamin
The Guardian - London
June 25, 2008

Asfin Azizian stares at you from the screen. Standing in his kitchen in north London, the former professional footballer from Iran nervously relays his story of detention, destitution and attempted suicide. However, his 13-year ordeal was not at the hands of Tehran's secret police, but the result of the British immigration service.

Azizian's painful experience is one of many horrific tales of asylum seekers' struggle and survival on the streets of Britain that will unfold on the stage of Southwark Playhouse, London, next month in a play combining film, live action and audience participation.

Devised and directed by Topher Campbell, artistic director of theatre company Red Room, Unstated aims to expose the dehumanising treatment meted out to some of society's most vulnerable people and its impact on both them and us.

"These people become stateless," Campbell explains. "We wanted to tell their stories in the UK, where their rights have been removed. While the government is debating whether to lock up terror suspects for 42 days, asylum seekers are being locked up in detention centres for two years. Britain is home to just 3% of refugees worldwide, yet the tabloid view is that we are being overrun..."

for link to video click here

for  link to complete Guardian article click here

Learn about death in detention

Citizen Orange has posted a video by Breakthrough that gives details about immigrants dying in ICE detention centers. For link to page with video click here

from Love America blog:

After a fellow detainee died under mysterious circumstances, which were covered up by detention facility authorities, Ahmad says he was threatened with lines like “We don’t want you to tell or speak to anyone about this” and “We have cameras and people [detainees] who are watching you, monitoring you.” Though Ahmad was released, he is still in deportation proceedings.

Sen. Menendez Speaks the Truth About ICE part III

Second half of Senator Menendez's June 11, 2008 speech to the U.S. Senate:

Sen. Menendez Speaks the Truth About ICE part II

Francisco Castaneda could be any of our current DREAMERS. He came to the U.S. when he was 10. Here is an excerpt from Menendez's immigration speech where he speaks of Francisco Castaneda:


Take the heartbreaking story of Francisco Castaneda. Francisco entered one of our detention facilities battling cancer – although he didn’t know it.
All he knew is that he had significant lesions on his reproductive organs.

Offsite officials who never examined Francisco repeatedly denied him the biopsy he so desperately needed. After 11 long months in custody, Francisco argued for and eventually obtained a temporary release so he could pay for his own biopsy. Life-threatening cancerous tumors were found.

Despite amputation of the affected area and several rounds of chemotherapy, Francisco died of cancer at the age of 36.

A federal judge recently noted that this case appears to present, quote, “one of the most, if not the most, egregious Eighth Amendment violations [involving cruel and unusual punishment] the Court has ever encountered.”

The United States of America essentially killed Francisco Castaneda by denying him the medical care he so desperately needed. Why? Because he had entered this country without the proper documentation, at the age of 10, with his mother, fleeing civil war in El Salvador—a war the US had helped to fund, a war which sent thousands of refugees like him to our country.

He was denied care because he tried to make a better life for himself and his family. These are hardly offenses that warrant death. We cannot, in good conscience, allow these conditions to continue.

NYT and Immigrant Detainee Medical Care

The New York Times has published an editorial calling DHS on it's inhumane treatment of undocumented immigrants. It reminds me of the McClellan book on the Bush Administration, why did the NYT take so long?



Below are previous dreamacttexas posts on this issue:

June 5, 2008 "You Are Not Supposed to Kill People in Custody"
May 12, 2008 "Immigrants and Medical Neglect, Part II"
May 11, 2008 "Immigrants and Medical Neglect, Part I"
May 5, 2008 "People Dying While in ICE Custody"
March 24, 2008 "It Doesn't Just Happen to Latinos"
December 24, 2007 "ICE Incompetence"
-----

June 11, 2008

Editorial
New York Times

Dying in Detention

The government has a duty to provide decent, effective, timely medical care to people in its custody. That should be beyond debate, but not when the government in question is the Bush administration and the people in custody are illegal immigrants.

Recent news reports from The Times, The Washington Post and CBS News have shone a harsh light on the immigration detention system, finding alarming evidence of shoddy care, inadequate staffing, lax standards, secrecy and chronic ineptitude.

Not many Americans know the names of detained immigrants like Boubacar Bah of Guinea and Francisco Castaneda of El Salvador. Mr. Bah died after falling and fracturing his skull; his injuries went untreated for more than 14 hours. Mr. Castaneda died because the diagnosis and treatment of his cancer was tragically delayed. They, and dozens of others, should be memorialized as victims of a system scarred by malign neglect.

The government should be rushing to improve the oversight and care in its sprawling detention system to protect all detainees. Instead, the official reaction has been slow and defensive, promised improvements are piecemeal, and criticism of the system is making immigration hard-liners indignant.

At a House subcommittee hearing last week, Representative Peter King, the committee’s ranking Republican, complained: “Why should the American people be responsible for paying for Rolls-Royce medical care for illegal aliens?” Representative Zoe Lofgren, the subcommittee’s chairwoman, is valiantly pushing back. She realizes that with the administration busily expanding immigration detention and failing far too often to meet its own minimal standards for medical care, it is up to Congress to insist on better.

She and Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey have sponsored the Detainee Basic Medical Care Act, which would go far to provide the basic protections that failed Mr. Bah and Mr. Castaneda. The bill would impose more rigorous standards on the network of more than 300 publicly and privately run prisons that make up the federal system — current rules are voluntary, not legally enforceable and not uniformly followed. And it would require that all deaths be reported to the Justice Department and Congress.

Congress should swiftly pass the bill, putting aside the poisoned debate over illegal immigration, which has no relevance here. Whether immigrants are legal or illegal has nothing to do with their right to humane care. As Ms. Lofgren bluntly put it: “You are not supposed to kill people who are in custody.”

for link to NYT editorial click here

Your are not supposed to kill people in custody

link to photo
House Judiciary Subcommittee

Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee's immigration subcommittee. was interviewed in relation to a committee hearing on conditions of detention for immigrants told a Washington Post reporter that: "ICE was defending the indefensible...Whatever you think about the overall debate on immigration...you are not supposed to kill people who are in custody."


During the hearing, Congressman King actually compared not dying while in custody with being given a Rolls Royce. Perhaps he thinks that the bar for the treatment of immigrants in custody is different than the rest of American society?

It reminds me of Barbara Bush's statement about the Katrina Refugees she saw at the Astrodome. "The former first lady toured the Astrodome Monday, and along the way she opined that many of the refugees from New Orleans were so poor to begin with that they ought to be pretty happy with their temporary digs in Houston" (from Salon.com).

Should we tell incarcerated immigrants that they are lucky to be in detention where they are fed and given a bed? I would bet that Barbara Bush and Peter King would think so.

----

Immigration Agency to Reveal Some Death Data
DHS Bureau Will Report the Number of People Who Die Awaiting Deportation

By Amy Goldstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 5, 2008; A02

The top U.S. immigration enforcement official told a congressional subcommittee yesterday that the Bush administration will disclose more information about foreigners who die in the sprawling network of federal detention centers around the country...

Yesterday's hearing was partisan and testy. Myers said ICE has been working to improve the health-care system. But detainees, their lawyers and relatives, and advocates for immigrants offered graphic testimony about misdiagnoses, medical neglect and secrecy.

ICE officials "are defending the indefensible," said Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee's immigration subcommittee. "Whatever you think about the overall debate on immigration," Lofgren said in an interview, "you are not supposed to kill people who are in custody."

Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.) countered, "Why should the American people be responsible for paying for Rolls-Royce medical care for illegal aliens?"

Myers and committee Republicans said that ICE figures show that the rate of deaths among detainees has fallen in recent years, and that fewer people die in immigration detention than in prison.

But one witness, who works in detention centers with foreigners seeking asylum in the United States, disputed ICE's claims, saying that health care in detention centers "is getting worse, not better." Homer Venters, a physician at the Bellevue-New York University Program for Survivors of Torture, said ICE's assertion that deaths among detainees fell by 49 percent between 2006 and 2007 is misleading...

for complete WP article click here

Letter to Chertoff on rights of detainees

Below is part of a letter written to Michael Chertoff, Director of Homeland Security. The letter is from 17 nationally recognized human rights organization (the list is abbreviated for this post). For a link to the complete letter click here

-----

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

Responding to Julie Myers and ICE

Julie Myers, assistant director of DHS published an op-ed piece in the Washington Post. in which she defended the agency while describing what she believes as competent care for those in detention. She is saying that ICE needs to be represented with "balanced" views. Of course it is fair to present different sides of the problem. But the Washington Post and the NY Times are not debating the quality of care in DHS detention centers. These newspapers are exposing inhumane treatment of detained immigrants. This is not a debate, it is a exposé of something very detrimental to our society.

My response to Myers' statements:

Myers: ICE did not create the detention or detainee health-care systems but, in fact, inherited the procedures of the former Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Division of Immigration Health Services (DIHS).

Response: Myers appears to be implying that her agency is less responsible for bad medical treatment in detention centers because DHS "inherited the procedures' and detention heath-care systems.

Myers: Psychologists and social workers have managed a daily population of more than 1,350 seriously mentally ill detainees without a single suicide being committed in the past 15 months.

Response: Perhaps none in the past 15 months (that have been reported), but suicide is still a very serious threat to the well-being of detainees. See WP article on suicides in detention.

Myers: [DHS has] national detention standards that are comparable to or surpass industry standards in their commitment to detainee health and comfort.

Response: The WP has a document that highlights actual DHS dollar savings when medical care is denied. This document shows DHS imitating the policies of HMOs, generally known for paying doctors not to treat (the care they don't give), versus the care they do give. Click here for details.

Myers: ICE detention facilities are open to those outside the agency. We routinely conduct tours for members of Congress, representatives from nongovernmental organizations and the media.

Response: from the ACLU: In March, 2008 U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants, Jorge Bustamante was denied entrance to New Jersey's Monmouth County Correctional Institution and Texas's Hutto immigration detention center, a converted prison According to ACLU the "U.S. has a history of blocking international experts from access to controversial detention facilities." For the complete ACLU report click here.

Myers: Readers should know that ICE does not tolerate malfeasance or malpractice. Instances of improper behavior will be immediately and vigorously investigated; if necessary, appropriate disciplinary action will be taken.

Response: If this is true, then why are there repeated incidents of ICE misrepresenting themselves as police, why are they entering homes without warrants, and verbally abuse people being interrogated (among many other inappropriate behaviors)? See ACLU statement requesting the Senate Judiciary Committee to investigate the DHS.

Dying in Detention: Deaths in ICE Custody

Manuel Perez-Ayala

died in 2004 at the age of 59

in Florence, Colorado

Immigrants & Medical Neglect Part II

This video is from a 60 Minutes segment made in conjunction with the WP series on immigrants and medical neglect. Edwidge Danticat is being interviewed, a winner of the National Book Award, she wrote about her 81 year old grandfather who died while in detention.

See dreamacttexas post about Danticat "It just doesn't happen to Latinos" from March 24, 2008

In Custody, In Pain

Beset by Medical Problems as She Fights Deportation, A U.S. Resident Struggles to Get the Treatment She Needs

by Amy Goldstein and Dana Priest | Washington Post Staff Writers

Page A1; May 12, 2008

FLORENCE, Ariz. -- Underneath her baggy jail-issue pants, Yong Sun Harvill feels the soft lump just below her left knee. Sometimes it tingles. Sometimes it is numb. Like her cancer felt when it arrived behind the knee a few years ago.

She noticed the lump under the thin, blue cotton in August, five months after federal immigration officers, to her amazement, took her into custody to try to deport her for buying stolen jewelry more than a decade ago. The lump grows slowly. It is now three inches across. And though she keeps asking, no one has done a test to see whether her sarcoma has come back.

Her leg is painful and swollen from hip to foot, damaged by past surgeries and radiation treatments. Some nights, liquid seeps through cracks in her distended skin. Her left ankle is three times as big as her right. For years, she relied on a leg pump to boost her circulation and keep the swelling in check. But as an immigration detainee in this desert prison town, Harvill, 52, has been unable to persuade anyone to get her a pump, or to let her family back in Florida send hers from home.

Nor has she gotten the biopsy that a doctor has told her she needs to determine whether the spots on her liver might be tumors. And it remains uncertain whether her frequent crying spells are part of bipolar disorder, as some records suggest, or a flare-up of old anxieties -- heightened now by chronic pain, bewildering medical problems, and the fact that, three decades after she arrived from South Korea as a teenage Army bride, she is in a jail far from home with the government trying to eject her from the United States...

for complete WP article click here

Washington Post List of Questionable Deaths in ICE Custody

How many deaths have not been disclosed? If we don't just look at deaths at medical facilities, can we count the people who burned to death during the Southern California fires? They were hiding in the brush because they knew if they went to shelters they would be detained and deported.

--- A Closer Look At 83 Deaths

Based on confidential medical records and other sources, The Washington Post identified 83 deaths of immigration detainees between March 2003, when the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency was created, and March 2008. The Post found that 30 of the deaths were questionable [for interactive WP map click here]--

* QUESTIONABLE DEATHS: In 30 of the cases examined by The Post, action taken -- or not taken -- by the medical staff may have contributed to the deaths, according to medical records, confidential internal reviews, or the assessment of outside physicians who reviewed some cases for The Post.

List of Questionable Deaths in Detention March 2003 to March 2005

Name Location of Death	Date of Death	Age	Country of Birth
Luis Dubegel-Paez Rolling Plains Detention Facility (Tex.)	3/14/08	60	Cuba
Francisco Castaneda Home after release from Otay Mesa (Calif.)	2/16/08	36	El Salvador
Juan Alejandro Guevara-Lazaro Thomason Hospital (Tex.)	8/13/07	21	Mexico
Rosa Contreras-Dominquez El Paso Service Processing Center (Tex.)	8/7/07	35	Mexico
Victor Arellano Little Company of Mary San Pedro Hospital (Calif.)	7/20/07	23	Mexico
Boubacar Bah University of Medicine (N.J.)	5/30/07	52	Guinea
Nery Romero Bergen County Jail (N.J.)	2/12/07	22	El Salvador
Jesus Cervantes-Corona Northwest Detention Center (Wash.)	11/18/06	42	Mexico
Antonio Martinez-Rivas Houston Contract Detention Facility (Tex.)	10/4/06	44	Mexico
Carlos Cortez-Raudel Mira Loma Detention Center (Calif.)	10/3/06	22	Mexico
Jose Lopez-Gregorio Eloy Federal Contract Facility (Ariz.)	9/29/06	32	Guatemala
Yusif Osman Otay Mesa detention facility (Calif.)	6/27/06	34	Ghana
Miguel Rodriguez-Gonzalez San Pedro Peninsula Hospital (Calif.)	5/21/06	43	Mexico
Geovanny Garcia-Mejia Newton County Correctional Center (Tex.)	3/18/06	27	Honduras
Felipe Garcia-Sanchez Oakdale Federal Detention Center (La.)	2/10/06	21	Colombia
Juan Salazar-Gomez Eloy Federal Contract Facility (Ariz.)	12/14/05	29	Mexico
Reinaldo Prado-Arencilia Northeast Medical Center (Tex.)	10/3/05	37	Cuba
Walter Alvarez-Esquivel Laredo Medical Center (Tex.)	6/30/05	46	Guatemala
Hassiba Belbachir McHenry County Jail (Ill.)	3/17/05	27	Algeria
Sung Soo Heo Passaic County Jail (N.J.)	2/16/05	51	Korea
Ignacio Sarabia-Vallasenor Otay Mesa detention facility (Calif.)	1/4/05	32	Mexico
Joseph Dantica Jackson Memorial Hospital (Fla.)	11/3/04	81	Haiti
Simon Reyes-Altimirano Mesa Hills Specialty Hospital (Tex.)	10/12/04	25	Hondurus
Ervin Ruiz-Tabares Guaynabo Metropolitan Detention Center (P.R.)	9/25/04	24	Colombia
Sebastian Mejia Vicentes Hampton Roads Regional Jail (Va.)	8/22/04	27	Mexico
Juan Figueredo-Lopez U.S. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners (Mo.)	5/29/04	45	Cuba
Cesar Rioz-Martinez Frio County Jail (Tex.)	2/16/04	25	Mexico
Adetunji Popoola Parkland Memorial Hospital (Tex.)	2/1/04	48	Nigeria
Bill Roy Kurt Marion San Diego Correctional Facility (Calif.)	7/31/03	?	Unknown
Kwan A. Chong San Pedro/UCLA-Harbor Hospital (Calif.)	6/10/03	?	Unknown

SOURCES: Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other sources | By Justin Ferrell, Nathaniel Vaughn Kelso, Julie Tate and Larry Nista, The Washington Post - May 10, 2008.

for WP's interactive map quick here

Dying in detention: deaths in ICE custody

Wilfredo Hernandez

died in 2004 at age 69

was in ICE custody in Olney, IL

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.


-----

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...


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Dying in Detention: Deaths in ICE Custody

Maria Solis-Perez

died in 2004 at age 44

was in ICE custody in Houston

Dying in Detention: Deaths in ICE Custody

Jose Rangel Rodriguez

died in 2004, at age 36

had been held at Kern County Jail, Bakersfield CA

Dying in detention: Deaths in ICE custody

Hector Mosley

died in 2004 at age 59

was in custody of New York State