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The Ombudsman Reacts to Feedback From U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
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I'm sure that ICE can tell success stories of some detainees who received adequate or even superior health care. But one fact stood out to me more than any other in pointing out DIHS problems: To get anything beyond the basics, a request must be faxed and approved in Washington, where four nurses are on duty from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. EST five days a week. How can any detainee in need of extra care get it with those restrictions?
You said that medical care is provided on an urgent basis. It obviously was not provided in some of the cases that Priest and Goldstein found. If, as it says on your site, sick call requests are prioritized 24/7 on the urgency of medical need, Priest and Goldstein would not have found so many problems.
The fact that Congress is interested in this matter may actually improve detainee care and the amount appropriated for it, so perhaps some good will come out of the series.
I will take your complaints in sequence, by day and by subject from your website:
Washington Post Detainee Health Care Series -- Day 1
ICE:The Washington Post began a four part series on Sunday, May 11th, on detention health care. The first article in the series and the companion CBS "60 Minutes" piece presented information on a number of detainee cases and incidents occurring before the transition of the DIHS from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to ICE and before ICE assumed greater administrative control over DIHS. Nonetheless, these pieces are very disturbing as they provide a very limited view of a complex and important topic.
If you read the first article, you may also be interested in the following:
Post vs. ICE regarding the May 11, 2008, article:
Post: "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."
ICE: What was marked "Completed" was the physical exam appointment, which is why the individual did not receive a follow-up physical examination. The medical record had the intake screening in it and did not show any significant health problems. Mr. Osman's medical record was active for the duration of detention.
Ombudsman: Because of this mistake in the detainee's file, when he had a medical crisis, the nurse believed it was enough to ask him to submit a sick call request, rather than to attend to him promptly. In her death review, the clinical director determined Osman did not receive "appropriate and adequate health care" in part because of this error.
Post: "About 33,000 people are crammed into these overcrowded compounds on a given day, waiting to be deported or for a judge to let them stay here."
