More Immigrant Detentions, More Deaths

[DeSwiss]

Source: Chicago Tribune

More immigrant detentions, more deaths
Arrests have risen dramatically, but critics say medical care has not kept pace

Chicago Tribune
By Michael Martinez | Tribune correspondent
8:10 AM CDT, June 1, 2008



BELL, Calif. — Yanira Castaneda weeps at the space in her living room where she spent a year caring for her brother, who died in February at 36, a loss for which she blames the U.S. government. Francisco Castaneda had been in a federal immigrant detention center because he was an illegal immigrant with a drug conviction. During his 10-month stay, his signs of cancer went untreated until the facility made him a free, but sick, man. He died a year later. "If they do a crime, they should do their time, but take care of them," said a tearful Yanira Castaneda, 35, whose family in the Los Angeles area is continuing her brother's lawsuit against the government. "I think my brother could have been saved."

His death is part of a growing body count linked to the nation's beefed-up detention system, alarming lawmakers and emerging as the newest Immigration controversy in a spate of Capitol hearings and media exposés. Federal Immigration officials say critics are exaggerating the problems. In the case of Castaneda, who fled El Salvador's civil war at age 10 with his family, the U.S. government in April admitted negligence. After federal authorities released him last year with signs of penile cancer, doctors had to amputate that organ in February 2007. But it was too late.

Since 2003, when the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency was created, 83 deaths reportedly have been linked to detention sites run by ICE or by private contractors and local governments, including one detainee with coronary artery disease in a Chicago detention center and a suicide in McHenry County Jail. ICE said last month that it counted 71 deaths since 2004, but no public reporting requirements exist.

Infrastructure expanded
Unable to resolve what to do with the nation's 12 million illegal immigrants, Congress authorized ICE to build a vast detention infrastructure that now holds more than 300,000 detainees a year. The expansion, to 32,000 beds from 19,444 in 2004, has been fueled by recent crackdowns such as the end of the "catch-and-release" of unauthorized immigrants, experts say. "No bureaucracy can respond quickly to the sort of dramatic change that the country has seen with Immigration enforcement and detention over the last decade or so," said Louis DeSipio, associate professor at the University of California at Irvine. As the largest investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security, ICE "was ramping up quickly and wanted to show or impress Congress that it was responding rapidly, but it didn't respond to these other needs" such as medical care, DeSipio said.

Read more: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-detention-immigrantsjun01,0,6121815.story?track=rss

---

- The Department of Homeland Security, providing employment for idiots since 2002....
========================================================================
DeSwiss


http://atheisttoolbox.com/">The Atheist Toolbox

[Robbien]

1. Hundreds of thousands of people being locked up without representation

Some people call that making people disappear.

All because some rabid rightwing fundies have God complexes.

[DeSwiss]

2. And so far....

...they've made 83 people disappear for good.

- That we know of....

[Robbien]

4. It just hurts the heart

to know there are over four hundred thousand families out there wondering where their loved one is, whether they are alive or dead. And they have no way of finding out.

The fact that over eighty people are dead in these facilities makes one wonder what kind of inhumane treatment is being meted out.

This country of ours has a cancer growing on its heart.

[nomorenomore08]

3. The Bush administration may not be a dictatorship, but they're sure good at playing one.

nt

[Zodiak]

6. The first step in wide-spread detention of swaths of the population

...is to first go for the people no one cares about. This way the infrastructure can be built without notice or resistance. Illegal immigrants serve nicely in that capacity.

300,000 is a LOT of people.

[Igel]

7. It is.

But under 1k arrested per day. And if the system has 32k beds, it means the average length of stay in the system isn't much more than a month, at most.

[EFerrari]

5. 10 times as many people have died as a result of immigration detention

than they have from detention on the War on Terra.

That we know of.