Fight inhumane medical care at ICE facilities.
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Today we're rallying around the ongoing atrocities happening at ICE detention facilities. This email, written by Bianca, focuses on inhumane medical care, but it's just one of many reasons to take action.
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Nicole
TAKE ACTION
GET EDUCATED
By Bianca Gonzalez (she/her)
As of November 11, 2020, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement have deported six of the women who came forward with claims of having been coerced into sterilization at Irwin County Detention Center in Georgia and will potentially deport at least seven others, says NBC. Dawn Wooten, a registered nurse who previously worked at the detention center, came forward in September, alleging that forced sterilization procedures were widespread at Irwin. Read more about this case in our previous newsletter on the subject.
Jackelin (who asked to be identified by her middle name) is a 33-year-old Hondorian immigrant and mother of five who is married to a US citizen. She has been living in the U.S. for more than five years. Jackelin was one of the 16 women who wanted to testify against Dr. Amin after receiving care four months prior. After coming forward, she was “scheduled for a … deportation flight, until a last-minute order came for her to remain at the rural Georgia facility.” (LA Times)
Even though, according to ice.gov, “it is against ICE policy to initiate removal proceedings against an individual known to be the immediate victim or witness to a crime,” ICE has taken that same action in light of recent legal pursuits.
Yanira, who has been a detainee for about a year, said after almost boarding the deportation flight, said that “they used to take their sweet time on deporting women, letting us stay here extra time to make us learn their lesson,” until the whistleblower came forward. “Then [nearly] everybody started getting deported so fast, everyone who’d had surgeries or something performed on them. There’s only a few of us left in here” (LA Times).
Columbia University law professor Elora Mukherjee is currently working with several of the detainees. She believes that “ICE is destroying the evidence needed for this investigation” by targeting these women for deportation (The Hill). While the women who have already been deported or who will be deported before they have a chance to speak with legal professionals might still be able to serve as witnesses in a case, those working on the issue will have an increased difficulty at maintaining contact.
Moreover, one report that looked into the death of 18 detainees from 2012 to 2015 found that “substandard care was evident in 16 out of 18 deaths, and subpar care contributed to the deaths of at least 7 of these individuals” as well as finding “numerous incidents of substandard and dangerous medical care,” which included “sluggish emergency responses” as well as “failure to follow up on symptoms that required attention” and “severely inadequate mental health care (Freedom for Immigrants).
Advocates have been expressing concerns over ICE practices for years. Eleven different independent human rights monitoring bodies have sent formal complaints to the US government over the past few years, expressing concerns for human rights violations at the Irwin County Detention Center and the Stewart Detention Center, which is also in Georgia run by a for-profit corporation (Aljazeera).
In May 2018, Project South and the Penn Law Transnational Legal Clinic sent a letter to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), citing extensive use of solitary confinement as a form of punishment and control, exploitation of immigrants’ labor, extremely negligent medical care, poor sanitation, denial of due process, and race-based discrimination as their evidence (Aljazeera).
While the neglect at ICE detention centers in Georgia is devastating and needs to be addressed immediately, other states are taking steps to improve conditions at their detention centers. Texan Congresswoman Veronica Escobar came together with Representatives Jason Crow, and Sylvia Garcia introduced the End Transfers of Detained Immigrants Act on November 20th, 2020 (Escobar).
This bill was introduced as a companion to Senators Michael Bennet and Jeff Merkley’s bill, the End Transfers of Detained Immigrants Act, released in late September 2020. It immediately prevents ICE from transferring immigrant detainees between ICE facilities or to any prison during the pandemic, as well as immediately releasing detainees whenever social distancing according to the CDC’s recommendations was not possible (Bennet). Read Bennet and Merkley’s bill here.
While we’re making progress in the fight for immigration reform in America when it comes to developing policies that protect human rights, we have more than enough evidence of medical negligence and abuse in detention centers to advocate for the immediate widespread release of detainees and to advocate for defunding ICE.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
The detainees who came forward claiming to have received medically unnecessary procedures by doctors have become targets for deportation.
States are making strides to advocate against inhuman practices at ICE detention centers, but we still need reform at the federal level.
ICE has an extensive history of medical neglect.
RELATED ISSUES
7/27/2020 | Support Asian Americans through COVID-19.
7/28/2020 | Denounce anti-Semitism.
11/4/2020 | Understand intergenerational trauma.
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