An Albanian man said his pain became so unbearable that he pulled out a tooth himself while spending months in an immigration detention center in New Mexico. A Honduran mother of two said she was hospitalized for a heart condition after being denied blood pressure medication while detained in Florida. A Venezuelan man said his leg turned purple and swollen from flesh-eating bacteria after staff at a Vermont center failed to take him to a scheduled doctor’s appointment.
Hundreds of detainees in at least 33 states have filed lawsuits alleging that immigration detention centers are failing to provide adequate medical care, according to an investigation by KFF Health News and the Associated Press (AP). Detainees say they were not given timely or at all medication for conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes, depression, epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease and HIV. Requests for help went unanswered for weeks. Blood sugar levels spiked. Infections worsened. Cancers went untreated. Some detainees collapsed or had seizures.
U.S. prisons and immigration detention centers have long struggled to meet the medical needs of those in their care. But the system is facing an overcrowding due to a surge in detentions since President Donald Trump took office. More than 75,000 immigrants were being detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as of mid-January, up from about 40,000 a year earlier.
KFF Health News and the AP analyzed thousands of lawsuits filed since Trump’s second inauguration that use a legal procedure known as “habeas corpus” to argue that people are being held illegally by ICE. The investigation found that allegations of medical malpractice extend throughout the vast detention system, including facilities not built to house people, county jails and makeshift places nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz.”
Researchers in the journal JAMA wrote in April that more people have died in ICE custody than at any time in the past two decades. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reported that 51 people had died in detention since the start of Trump’s second term, while suicides have reached unprecedented levels. KFF Health News and the AP asked DHS for comment on the findings six days before publication but did not receive a response. Individual facilities and private prison companies that contract with DHS and responded to requests for comment said they follow ICE standards and that detainees receive medical care when needed. Some said they were unaware of the allegations outlined in the court documents, while others blamed the detainees themselves for the shortcomings in their treatment.
“I have never seen such disregard or medical negligence anywhere,” Vardan Ghukasian, a political dissident and former physician assistant from Armenia who had spent years in prisons in his home country, wrote in a court filing in March. He was challenging his detention in Henderson, Nevada, which had lasted 13 months despite his health problems.
Madeleine Skains, a spokeswoman for the city of Henderson, said medical care is always available at the facility, and that the court had not ordered any changes to his treatment. Last June, while Gukasian was experiencing symptoms of uncontrolled blood pressure, dizziness, nosebleeds and headaches, his cellmate pounded on the door for help. “When help didn’t come, the rest of the block started banging on the doors,” he wrote. Gukasian was hospitalized that same day.
“OPEN FACTS TO VISIBLE PROBLEMS”
The administration’s campaign of mass deportations has involved hundreds of thousands of people in routine appearances with immigration authorities, at traffic stops, in their homes and even in hospitals. About 70% of those detained have no criminal convictions. Their immigration proceedings are civil, not criminal.
“I couldn’t understand why they were treating me so harshly,” said a father of six from Georgia. He said he was injured while handcuffed when the vehicle transporting him to a facility in Atlanta jerked, throwing him from his seat and slamming him into a metal support. His wound became infected with E. coli bacteria because, he said, he was forced to sleep on a dirty concrete floor next to leaking toilets. Like other detainees interviewed, he spoke on condition of anonymity, saying he feared for his safety, that of his family, or that going public might harm his immigration case in court.
According to court documents, staff at the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia, failed to adequately respond to his pleas for medical help until he lost consciousness and was taken to a hospital about an hour away. There, he said, a doctor told him he narrowly escaped having his left leg amputated.
The 48-year-old, who immigrated from Guatemala to the United States more than two decades ago, was released in October and is now a legal permanent resident. However, he is unsure whether he will be able to return to his construction job, as he says he can no longer lift weights because of his injury. Some detainees or their lawyers have said they were denied even basic care: supplies to cover an open wound on their leg, prenatal care for a high-risk pregnancy, a pillow to ease the pain of advanced stomach cancer and sanitary pads for postpartum bleeding. “I would like to believe that the government has the best interests of the people it detains, regardless of the length of time,” federal Judge Benita Pearson said during a hearing in October.
Dora Schriro, a former ICE official and now a senior counsel to the American Bar Association, said that case law requires the government to treat people in immigration detention with the same care as those in traditional prisons awaiting trial. However, administrators are given discretion and standards of medical care vary.
Detainees are frequently transferred around the country, often without warning, interrupting their treatment. A woman from El Salvador said she missed an entire week of HIV treatment when she was transferred from Colorado to a county jail in Wyoming. A Russian man wrote that he had seen a gastroenterologist for gallstones while incarcerated in Texas and had made an appointment with the surgeon. “Unfortunately, I never got to see him because I was constantly being moved from one detention center to another,” he said. One detainee who had lost one eye and suffered from severe glaucoma in the other eye needed eye drops twice a day to preserve his remaining vision. But, he said, some days the drops wouldn’t work at all.
“I can only see a little bit in front of me now. It often feels like I’m looking through a thin material,” he wrote in a court statement. “This scares me a lot because I’m afraid that one day I’ll open my eyes and I won’t be able to see anything anymore.” He wrote that he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to see his baby son grow up.
“Before, you could try to cooperate with government officials and maybe embarrass them into doing the right thing. Now it seems like for everything you want to accomplish, you have to go to court and file a lawsuit,” said his lawyer, Brian Hoffman. Even court orders aren’t always enough. A judge in California ordered the government to send a man showing signs of prostate cancer to a specialist for diagnosis and treatment. Documents show he wasn’t sent. Lawyers representing ICE told the court that the meeting was missed because of an “internal scheduling error.”
GREAT INCREASE IN COURT CASES
When immigrants file habeas corpus petitions, they are exercising a right to challenge unlawful detention that dates back to the Middle Ages. More than 40,000 such petitions have been filed during Trump’s second term, largely in response to decisions last year to deny parole to many people detained on immigration charges. Justices remain divided on the legality of these measures, and the case is expected to end up before the Supreme Court.
Many of these requests have been successful, but judges usually base their decisions on reasons other than the medical negligence described in the petitions, such as holding people for an excessively long time before deportation.
The more than 300 medical malpractice claims identified by this investigation represent only a fraction of the problem. The details of habeas corpus cases often remain hidden from the public because of a federal rule that prohibits the online publication of these documents. Several judges have written that the habeas corpus procedure is not the proper way to pursue medical malpractice claims and have refused to release detainees on that basis.
WATCHING LOVED ONES GETTING WORSE
Detainees who receive inadequate medical care have few avenues for appeal. Last year, DHS significantly weakened the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman. In early May, the office was closed entirely, citing a lack of funding from Congress. Previously, the Ombudsperson’s staff could help secure medical care or investigate complaints of negligence, according to Matt Boles, an immigration attorney in Georgia. Now, he said, there is no one to call. Meanwhile, families of detainees say they feel powerless, frustrated by the calls they make to detention centers, government and political representatives as they watch their loved ones’ conditions deteriorate.
Riya Khan has watched her mother grow increasingly ill at the California City Detention Facility, a facility owned by CoreCivic.
Masuma Khan came to the U.S. from Bangladesh in 1997. According to documents, she has no criminal record and was detained in October when she reported to ICE for a routine checkup. During the month she was detained, her daughter said, she only occasionally took her medication for high blood pressure, hypothyroidism and prediabetes. Before being detained by ICE, Masuma Khan was a very sociable person, her daughter said. She had worked for years at Lucky Boy, a popular fast-food restaurant in Pasadena. Now she is too afraid to go outside. She still has to report to ICE regularly and, according to her daughter, experiences anxiety every time her report date approaches.
In the past, detainees with serious health problems were often released on humanitarian grounds, in part to avoid the high costs of treatment, said Vermont attorney Andrew Pelcher.
In fiscal year 2023, before the number of detainees increased significantly, ICE spent more than $390 million on health care for detained foreign nationals, according to its most recent report to Congress. At a briefing in May, then-acting director Todd Lyons said ICE spent “nearly half a billion dollars” on health care for detainees that year alone. Now, under the so-called “mandatory detention” policy, advocates say many people are being held despite serious illnesses and the expensive treatments they need.
(Taken from the Associated Press)