Report: Detainees at risk of sickness
Inadequate medical care linked to migrant deaths
A congressional oversight committee investigation has found that an officer at the Eloy Detention Center failed to properly monitor a detainee in solitary confinement who died in June 2018 and then falsified observation logs to cover up the failure.
The investigation, summarized in a scathing report released Thursday, found that several detainees have died after receiving inadequate medical care at facilities operated by for-profit contractors working with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, part of the Department of Homeland Security.
Huy Chi Tran’s death was one of six highlighted in the report citing “a widespread failure to provide necessary medical care to detainees with serious and chronic medical conditions.”
At least 49 people have died in ICE custody since 2017, according to the report from the House Oversight and Reform Committee’s Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.
The investigation also found that immigrants in ICE custody face “serious risks” from “deficient sanitation practices and poor handling of infectious diseases,” including COVID-19.
At least eight people have died after contracting the coronavirus while detained by ICE, the report noted.
As of Thursday, 6,074 detainees in ICE custody and 45 employees have tested positive for COVID-19 in more than 95 detention centers in 31 states
and Puerto Rico.
The House subcommittee’s report comes after allegations by a whistleblower complaint that claimed federal immigration detainees being held at the Irwin County Detention Center in Georgia underwent unnecessary gynecological surgeries — including full hysterectomies — without their consent.
The allegations prompted more than 170 Democratic members of Congress to urge the Homeland Security Department’s Inspector General to open an immediate investigation.
The new report blasted President Donald Trump’s administration for continuing to “reward” private forprofit companies that run detention facilities with lucrative contracts “even though DHS’s own internal reports found that egregious medical deficiencies and negligence led to the deaths of multiple detainees and poor treatment for many others.”
The investigation was initiated in 2019 by Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, D-Maryland, the former chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, in response to “troubling reports” of deaths of adults and children, deficient medical care, prolonged detention, improper treatment and “filthy conditions at facilities operated by ICE and Customs and Border Protection,” the report said.
Following Cummings’ death in October, the investigation was continued by Rep. Carolyn Maloney, DNew York, the committee’s chairwoman.
Stacey Daniels, ICE’s director of public affairs, dismissed the report, calling it a “one-sided” smear that fails to take into account improvements made at immigration detention facilities based on recommendations from the DHS Office of Inspector General’s inspection program.
“U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is fully committed to the health and safety of those in our care and will review the committee’s report. However, it is clear this one-sided review of our facilities was done to tarnish our agency’s reputation, as opposed to actually reviewing the care detainees receive while in our custody,” Daniels said in a written statement.
Recent improvements include formal facility inspections, independent third-party compliance reviews, daily on-site compliance reviews and targeted site visits, she said.
The report includes new details into the death of Huy Chi Tran, a 47-year-old Vietnamese man who died in June 2018 “of a sudden cardiac arrest after being detained for eight days and placed in solitary confinement” at the Eloy Detention Center. The facility, located about one hour south of Phoenix, is owned and operated by Nashville-based CoreCivic.
An internal ICE report on Tran’s death, obtained by the committee, identified several concerns regarding his medical care.
Tran was placed in solitary confinement before he had been medically cleared and was found in his cell unconscious just three hours later. He died in a hospital a week later. The nurse that approved his placement in solitary confinement only reviewed Tran’s medical records and did not obtain his vital signs or assess his physical condition.
CoreCivic detention staff were supposed to check on Tran every 15 minutes. But the detention officer on duty left Tran unsupervised for 51 minutes just before Tran’s cardiac arrest that led to his death.
Investigators found that the officer falsified observation logs to hide the fact that he had failed to conduct welfare checks over that 51-minute period.
A doctor prescribed medication to treat Tran for symptoms related to schizophrenia and an anxiety disorder but the medication was never provided to him.
Medical staff did not begin to administer Tran’s prescribed antipsychotic medications until he had been at the facility for two days. On one occasion, medication was provided to Tran twice the same day, resulting in him receiving double the prescribed dose.
The lead nurse failed to correctly adhere the automated external defibrillator pads correctly, rendering the AED ineffective in resuscitating Tran.
Tran’s death was the16th at the Eloy Detention Center since 2004, the report found.
The report cited an ICE Health Service Corps whistleblower complaint that alleged that during a briefing with ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations on the preliminary cause of death, IHSC leadership’s report was “very misleading.”
The whistleblower complaint provided to the DHS Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, contained more than a dozen allegations regarding inadequate medical care at several ICE facilities, including Eloy.
“IHSC leadership was informed of multiple concerns regarding the care provided at the facility, particularly the facility’s psychiatrist misdiagnosing, failing to treat detainees appropriately, and the lack of readily available emergency medications,” the DHS report alleged, based on the whistleblower complaint.
The DHS Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties identified other instances of inadequate medical care at Eloy, the committee report said.
In one case, a man suffering from psychosis-related symptoms was not treated by the facility psychiatrist.
He became “so unstable that he lacerated his penis, requiring hospitalization and surgery,” the report said.
In another case, a man suffering from psychoticlike symptoms was improperly prescribed an antidepressant, rather than an anti-psychotic, “likely worsening his symptoms,” the report said.
CoreCivic spokeswoman Amanda Gilchrist said in a written statement that CoreCivic does not provide medical or mental health services at the Eloy Detention Center. The federal government’s ICE Health Services Corps is solely responsible for “contracting, staffing and oversight of any medical and mental health services provided” at the facility.
In detention facilities where CoreCivic does provide care, “our clinics are staffed with licensed, credentialed doctors, nurses and mental health professionals who contractually meet the highest standards of care,” she said.
She did not directly address the report’s allegations that a detention officer at Eloy falsified observation logs after failing to properly monitor Tran.
“Facility staff and management are contractually required and held accountable to applicable Performance-Based National Detention Standards (PBNDS) as well as those of the independent American Correctional Association (ACA). ICE maintains full-time monitoring staff onsite at the facility who ensure CoreCivic’s adherence to the above standards and who have unfettered access throughout the facility — including the restrictive housing area — as well as to all detainees,” Gilchrist said in a statement
She also said “CoreCivic is committed to the safety and health of every individual in our care.”
The House report said the Trump administration has awarded more than $5 billion in contracts to CoreCivic and Boca Raton, Florida-based GEO Group Inc, the two biggest detention contractors, to operate private detention centers.
“Instead of holding contractors accountable, and imposing financial penalties, ICE has issued waivers to allow deficient practices to continue and exempt contractor facilities from certain health and safety standards,” the report said.
Christopher V. Ferreira, manager of corporate relations for the GEO Group Inc., said in a written statement: “We strongly reject these baseless allegations, which are part of another politically driven report that ignores more than three decades of providing highquality services to those in our care.”
“For more than thirty years, we have provided highquality services to the federal government under both Democrat and Republican administrations and we have always complied with the Performance-Based National Detention Standards, which were first established under President Barack Obama’s administration. Furthermore, the Center is highly rated by independent accreditation entities, including the American Correctional Association and the National Commission on Correctional Health Care,” the statement said.