(C) Verite News New Orleans This story was originally published by Verite News New Orleans and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Report: Many recent immigration detainee deaths could have been prevented [1] ['Bobbi-Jeanne Misick', 'More Bobbi-Jeanne Misick', 'Verite News', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow', 'Class', 'Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus', 'Display Inline', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar', 'Where Img', 'Height Auto Max-Width'] Date: 2024-06-25 A new report released Tuesday (June 25) is shining a light on the circumstances around deaths that happen while people are held in federal immigration custody. A majority of recent deaths may have been prevented had detainees received better medical care, the researchers found. Between 2017 and 2021, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement reported that 53 people died while being held in its custody. Three human rights organizations – American Oversight, American Civil Liberties Union and Physicians for Human Rights – teamed up to examine federal, state and local records connected to those in-custody deaths. Ultimately, the groups obtained records for 52 of those detainees — comprising more than 14,500 pages of documents. Medical experts who reviewed the documents found that six detainee deaths could have been prevented if the detainee received appropriate care. The experts found that 28 deaths they reviewed appeared to be “likely preventable.” Another 15 were deemed “possibly preventable,” meaning that there was a “reasonable possibility” that death could have been prevented had staff provided proper medical or mental health care. Only three deaths were deemed not preventable. In-custody deaths spiked in 2020, as COVID-19 spread through detention facilities. Of the 53 deaths reported during the period examined in the report, 18 were from that year — six of which were due to complications related to a COVID infection. In many cases, the report said, ICE failed to follow recommendations to release the most medically vulnerable detainees. And facilities “failed to follow basic precautions,” like providing adequate masks, soap and cleaning supplies. “The findings indicate that the lack of medical and mental healthcare continue to place people in serious danger [and] that these conditions have not improved,” Eunice Hyunhye Cho, a lead author of the report and a senior staff attorney at the ACLU National Prison Project, said in a phone interview. “And indeed ICE’s increased reliance on detention and the growing number of people in detention only means that people will continue to be in peril for their lives.” An ICE spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on the report. Dr. Michele Heisler, Physicians for Human Rights’ medical director who reviewed some of the cases, called the deaths “the tip of the iceberg” in terms of indications of inadequate medical and mental health care. “Even with really, really bad medical care, deaths are somewhat rare,” Heisler said in a phone interview. “You can only imagine, given how suboptimal medical care was in these cases of death, how bad it is for people who may not die, but they have long term adverse consequences.” Care that doctors found to be “suboptimal” ranged from severe understaffing and nurses operating in roles beyond their practicing scope to life-saving medication being discontinued and severely delayed responses to patients in need of mental health treatment or emergency medical care. Experts also found that detention staff did not always follow their own guidelines for monitoring people in solitary confinement. Getting the documents Through requests under the federal Freedom of Information Act, researchers gathered more than 14,500 pages of documents, including records that are commonly prepared when someone in DHS custody dies – detainee death reviews, healthcare and security compliance analyses, root cause analysis, mortality reviews and autopsy reports. But the federal agencies would not release the records quickly or willingly, said Taylor Stoneman, an attorney at American Oversight who worked on the litigation to get the agency to comply with FOIA. “The biggest roadblock was ICE’s extreme resistance,” Stoneman said in a phone interview. “They used boilerplate excuses over every report that they withheld even though specificity is required. And ultimately the court saw through that boilerplate language.” American Oversight filed four lawsuits against different agencies within the Department of Homeland Security, most notably ICE. When the records were finally released they were heavily redacted, leading to “large swaths of information” being undisclosed. Continued litigation led to those redactions being removed. Had ICE provided the records in the time that they were legally required to release them, the organizations would have begun their review more than one year earlier than they were able to, Stoneman said. “By slowing the FOIA process and consuming resources through litigation, in conjunction with the assertion of unjustified withholdings, ICE obstructed access to information that the public has the legal right to view,” the report said. New Orleans ICE Field Office The report highlights two cases within the New Orleans ICE Field Office region, which includes detention facilities in Louisiana and Mississippi, that the researchers said were illustrative of the type of substandard care detainees face when they are having a medical crisis. In one 2020 example, at the Adams County Correctional Center in Natchez, Mississippi 51-year-old Anthony Alexander Jones complained of pain and tightness in his chest and arms — symptoms associated with a heart attack. It took 30 minutes for him to be sent to the medical unit and assessed with an electrocardiogram, which showed signs of acute coronary syndrome – which requires immediate emergency care. But medical staff did not call emergency services. Instead they told him to wait in the medical unit’s waiting room for an hour. Roughly 30 minutes later video surveillance footage showed him slumped over, having convulsions and then lying motionless in his chair, the report said. No one checked on him for another 45 minutes. Once staff members came back and saw his condition, they waited nine more minutes to initiate CPR. Heisler, who did not review the case, but read the description outlined in the report, called the circumstances surrounding Jones’ death “egregious.” The initial protocol, she said, would have been to give him an aspirin to chew and call an ambulance. “This was absolutely a preventable death and shockingly heartbreaking,” she said. In a 2019 case from Richwood Correctional Center in Monroe, Roylan Hernandez Diaz died by suicide while being held in isolation for “threatening” to hunger strike after requesting and not receiving mental healthcare. The report said officers required to monitor the segregation cells every 30 minutes walked the unit but failed to look into Hernandez Diaz’ room in the hour before he was found dead. “If [detention staff] had adhered to their own protocols to monitor they would have saved his life,” Heisler said. “They didn’t meet their guidelines for monitoring anyone in solitary confinement. They have even more rigorous guidelines for someone who is suicidal. That is definitely preventable. That’s just heartbreaking.” The report recommends that ICE release any detainees with severe medical conditions, arguing that the facilities are not designed to care for people with serious illness. Overall, Cho said ICE should “end its reliance on the use of immigration detention.” She cited the available alternatives, such as electronic monitoring, to detention that allow immigrants seeking asylum to live within their communities while they undergo the asylum process. “What is really important to remember is that each of these people were loved members of families,” she said. “And each of these deaths represent the tragedies that could have been prevented.” Related Republish This Story Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license. [END] --- [1] Url: https://veritenews.org/2024/06/25/report-many-recent-immigration-detainee-deaths-could-have-been-prevented/ Published and (C) by Verite News New Orleans Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 3.0 US. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/veritenews/