These doctors risked their careers to expose the dangers children face in immigrant family detentio

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These doctors risked their careers to expose the dangers children face in immigrant family detention


https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/23/health/ice-family-detention-whistleblowers-doctors/index.html

By Catherine E. Shoichet and Dr. Edith Bracho-Sanchez, CNN

Updated 4:39 AM ET, Thu May 23, 2019

(CNN)Dr. Scott Allen and Dr. Pamela McPherson were used to working behind the scenes, quietly documenting the devastating things they'd seen.




Children's fingers crushed by cell doors. A boy who'd lost nearly a third of his body weight in a matter of days. Incorrect vaccine doses and missed diagnoses.
Each incident, the doctors say, was meticulously noted in reports they filed with the US Department of Homeland Security. Allen and McPherson -- an internist and a psychiatrist -- are expert consultants contracted by the department's Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.
Their mission: inspecting the facilities where US Immigration and Customs Enforcement detains immigrant families..............................................



.........• Numerous children who suffered severe finger injuries while confined in a facility that was designed as a medium-security prison for adults.


"That one really bothered me," Allen says, describing how they uncovered the pattern by combing through the charts of children who'd been taken to the emergency room.

"These are shattered fingers, significant lacerations -- probably some of the injuries disfiguring. And you start to think about how they're happening. And they're these heavy, spring-loaded doors in a facility that was constructed to have adult males ... and the light bulb goes on that this is a complete disaster," he says. "Because they're using cells, but they paint them pretty colors and they now call them dorm rooms. But it's got the same door."


Once the problem was pointed out, he says, officials were still slow to correct it -- something that Allen says was "very discouraging to see."
"Somewhere out there there's kids walking around with disfigured fingers for the rest of their life," he says, "because no one could really get their act together to fix that problem."....................................