Illegal Immigrants Received Poor Care In Jail, Lawyers Say

At his home in East Los Angeles, Francisco Castaneda of El Salvador faces a grim truth: His cancer is spreading, from his groin to his lymph nodes and toward his stomach, a progression that could soon end his life.

As he undergoes painful chemotherapy, Castaneda's lawyers are saying that the spread of the disease could have been prevented if government doctors had aggressively treated a small lesion that grew while he was held for 10 months in a San Diego prison as an illegal immigrant facing deportation. In a recently filed federal tort claim, Castaneda's lawyers charge that the "neglect allowed the development of metastasis penile cancer that will likely cause Mr. Castaneda's death in two years."

Castaneda's case is one of several that lawyers are investigating on behalf of illegal immigrants who they say were taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement with manageable illnesses and released with infections that threatened life and limb.

The extent of poor medical treatment for illegal immigrant detainees is an open question. Tom Jawetz, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union's National Prison Project, noted that detainees often speak little or no English, are unaware of their rights, have no access to appointed counsel and disappear after being deported. Still, lawyers say that scores of detainees have not received proper care, leading to disfigurement and even death.

"It's all too common in the treatment of federal detainees," said Adele Kimmel, a lawyer for Public Justice and a co-counsel in Castaneda's case. "They get treatment that you might see in a Third World country, and it's really a stain on our system of justice to treat detainees this way."

ICE officials denied claims of medical mistreatment, noting that detainees undergo physical examinations within 12 hours of entering detention. "I deny the assertion that we don't properly treat detainees," said Tim Shack, medical director for the Division of Immigration Health Services, which provides health-care services for ICE. "We deliver excellent medical care to detainees."

A December report by the Office of the Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security said that the system is generally well run. But the report also noted that four of five facilities in its study had "instances of non-compliance" regarding health care, "including timely initial and responsive medical care."

Basic care is provided by medical staff members where detainees are housed. Shack said that tens of thousands of requests for treatment beyond basic care are submitted each year and that about 90 percent are approved. ICE allocates $70 million each year to the Division of Immigration Health Services for medical treatment, he said.

In addition to documenting injuries and illnesses, the ACLU is trying to determine whether medical negligence has contributed to 20 deaths since 2004.

Among those who died while in ICE custody were a man from Sierra Leone who collapsed at a Virginia jail after saying he did not get medicine for a kidney ailment, a woman from Barbados who died in another Virginia jail after telling her sister that she received no medicine for a uterine fibroid that caused hemorrhaging, and a South Korean woman who died after cellmates appealed to authorities for help over a period of weeks, lawyers said.

Tim Perry, assistant director of the Division of Detention Management for ICE, denied that the deaths were the result of negligence and said autopsy results will prove that.

Castaneda was taken into ICE custody in March of last year. He was scheduled to be deported for violating parole after serving time for a robbery conviction. Records show that he suffered from genital warts.