Blinded in custody, migrant faces future in war-torn Sierra Leone
Critics say case demonstrates lack of adequate care in ICE detention
CONROE — Mohamed Gordon’s vision was fading.
A legal resident from Sierra Leone, Gordon had slipped in the Fort Bend County jail in the fall of 2017, smacking his head so hard he ended up in the hospital. Months later, his eyesight blacked out, and doctors diagnosed him with a detached retina. He needed urgent surgery to save his right eye, he was told.
Gordon, 27, shuttled between county jail, state prison and federal immigration custody, where he finally had the operation weeks later in August 2018.
But that marked only the beginning of a monthslong saga to recover his sight. Gordon complained to Immigration and Customs
Enforcement officials in Conroe at least 17 times of pain and pressure, explaining that he needed follow-up care, his medical records show. Doctors warned that without an immediate second surgery, he risked losing his vision permanently. His mother pleaded for ICE to allow him out on bond so that she could pay for the operation.
By this summer, Gordon lost hope, along with sight in his eye.
He suffers from debilitating headaches, and doctors may have to remove his eye to relieve the pressure.
His mother, Kadiatu Lamin, a Houston nurse, is filled with anxiety at the thought of him returning partially blind to battlescarred Sierra Leone, where he has no family.
“I just wish they would have deported him in an OK condition,” she said. “He’s all I have.”
Advocates say the case is another example of the government “systemically failing” to provide adequate medical care to many of the more than 47,200 immigrants held daily in some 200 civil federal detention centers across the country — roughly a third of them detained by private prison companies in Texas. Complaints about the facilities have persisted for years, but they came under increased attention in recent months as lawmakers, watchdog outfits and advocacy groups accused the government of knowing about “horrific, inhumane, punitive” conditions but doing nothing to improve them.
ICE and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, have been “informed repeatedly — by their own inspection units, by other governmental inspectors and agencies, by nongovernmental entities, and by numerous other sources — that systemic unlawful conditions of confinement are rampant” but failed to fix them, according to a federal lawsuit filed in August by the Southern Poverty Law Center and other advocacy groups.
The 210-page complaint alleges that ICE officers denied medical care for detainees and often failed to seek emergency treatment. One plaintiff has spent more than a year in a California detention center without treatment after a tentative diagnosis of an invasive brain parasite, the lawsuit says. Two diabetic immigrants were not given insulin. A 28-year-old Haitian has waited years for required eye surgery, putting him at risk of losing his sight, and was denied the PTSD medication he took in prison because “ICE has a different standard,” according to the litigation.
Critics said the long-lasting problems have been exacerbated as the number of people in detention ballooned under the Trump administration’s policies, doubling from 2017 to almost half a million in the fiscal year ending in September. Immigrants are staying imprisoned for record periods and on average more than a quarter — nearly 14,000 — of those held daily are detained despite passing initial asylum interviews and proving not to be a flight risk or danger, according to federal statistics.
ICE declined to comment on the pending litigation, adding, “lack of comment should not be construed as agreement with, or stipulation to, any of the allegations.” It said that the agency spends more than $269 million annually on health care for detainees and that they have access to physicians, nurses, mental health care providers, dental services and 24-hour emergency care.
Nearly 200 immigrants have died in ICE detention centers since 2003, including at least 30 within the last three years.
Democrats have called for investigations into some deaths and convened hearings on the lack of oversight this fall.
ICE’s own death reviews suggest negligence contributed to about half of the agency’s fatalities from 2015 through 2017, Heidi Altman, director of policy at the National Immigrant Justice Center, a nonprofit in Chicago, testified before Congress in September. ICE has not released many of its internal reports on the more recent deaths.
“ICE has failed to investigate or remedy the unsafe conditions putting human lives in jeopardy,” Altman said. “In the very same facilities where multiple deaths have occurred, individuals in detention and their advocates continue to report egregious lapses in medical care and unconscionable delays in treatment.”
‘Trying to fit in’
Lamin became pregnant in 1991, four months after civil war erupted in Sierra Leone, a Western African country bordering Guinea and Liberia.
Her son was 2 when rebel forces killed his father, a mining engineer in charge of the diamond fields crucial to the resistance financing of the war. Gordon’s mother grabbed him and ran, following a panicked crowd into the brush. For days they drank from muddy streams and ate wild fruit. The toddler fell so ill that he could barely walk.
British special forces saved them, airlifting them to the capital, Freetown, where Lamin left her only son with her brother-inlaw. In 1995, she flew to Houston on a tourist visa, hoping to find a way to stay and bring her child.
Kofi Annan, then secretary-general of the United Nations, at the time described atrocities during Sierra Leone’s 11-year civil war as the worst in recent history after Pol Pot’s genocide in Cambodia. More than 50,000 people — 1 percent of the country’s population — were killed. Children were forced to be soldiers, women were raped and tens of thousands of people, even babies, had their limbs hacked off.
In January 1999, rebels set upon the capital for what they termed “Operation No Living Thing,” raping and killing widely. More than 7,000 people died, at least half of them civilians, according to Human Rights Watch. When the rebels arrived at his uncle’s home, Gordon, then 7, was using the toilet in the outhouse. He hid inside the latrine while soldiers slaughtered everyone in the house, then set it ablaze.
British soldiers found the boy and took him to a refugee camp in Guinea, where he lived in harsh conditions for a decade until his mother was finally able to find him in 2007. By then she had married an American citizen, who applied for Gordon to legally immigrate here as his stepson when he was 16.
“I didn’t even recognize my mother when she picked me up from the airport,” Gordon said during an interview in detention.
His transition from a refugee camp to Willowridge High School in Missouri City was tough, though he excelled at basketball and enrolled at Blinn College in Brenham with plans to study engineering.
During his freshman year in 2014, a fight with a friend over who was paying their joint cellphone account ended with Gordon stalking into his apartment and taking what he thought was the man’s laptop. It belonged to his roommate, so grand jurors in Washington County indicted Gordon for burglary of a habitation, a second-degree felony. He pleaded no contest and received deferred adjudication — a form of probation that counts as a conviction for the purposes of deportation under immigration law.
Gordon dropped out of college and landed back at his mother’s house in Missouri City, where he fell into a rough crowd. Some were felons and in the MOB 187 street gang, which Houston police alleged Gordon had joined, though he said he was only hanging out with friends.
“He was coming from the camps to America, and he was trying to fit in,” his mother said.
In April 2015, Gordon was at a car wash in Fort Bend County when gang unit officers said he and his friends were playing loud music in an area known for drug activity, according to their reports. The men made “furtive movements” and officers said they smelled marijuana. They found nearly a gram in Gordon’s Volvo and a pistol belonging to one of his passengers, as well as a stolen gun and keys to a stolen car. Police charged Gordon for the marijuana and later issued a warrant for “engaging in organized criminal activity,” often used for suspected gang members.
Over the next two years, Gordon had several run-ins with police, including failure to use his turn signal, riding in the backseat of a stolen car and having a gun in violation of his probation. In the summer of 2017, he was booked into the Fort Bend County jail, and ICE officers requested that Gordon be transferred to their custody after completing his sentence. The burglary, marijuana and organized criminal activity convictions — “crimes involving moral turpitude” under immigration law — made him eligible for removal, despite his green card.
Detached retina
In August 2017, as Hurricane Harvey pummeled Houston, Gordon was running down the stairs in the Fort Bend County jail when he slipped on water that had spilled from buckets onto the floor. Falling back, he twisted his ankle and banged his head on the concrete. Jail staff took him to the emergency room, where he had an MRI and CAT scan before being transferred to the Washington County jail. Ten months later, in June 2018, he was reading a book in jail when his right eye went dark.
A doctor said his retina had become detached, likely from the fall, and urged immediate surgery. But Gordon was about to be sent to state prison for two weeks before moving to ICE custody. He said jail officials told him that he would receive the operation at the federal facility.
Weeks later, Gordon underwent the surgery after being booked into CoreCivic’s immigrant detention facility, the Houston Processing Center, in August 2018. That is a “significant delay,” said Dr. Raj Maturi, a clinical spokesperson for the American Academy of Ophthalmology, who said doctors usually recommend waiting no longer than seven days.
Doctors glued back Gordon’s retina and inserted silicon oil in his eye to keep it in place. They told him the silicon should be removed within three to six months.
In September, Gordon saw a specialist three times but was told the silicon could not be taken out “due to financial reasons,” Gordon wrote in a complaint filed with ICE.
On Oct. 1, after being transferred to the GEO Group-run Montgomery Processing Center, ICE staff noted the surgery in his medical records and on Oct. 4 referred him to an ophthalmologist.
On Oct. 17, Gordon told ICE officials that he still had not seen a specialist, though he was supposed to have the silicon removed because it was hurting his eye. After he was placed in segregation for complaining that he had been jumped by detainees, he told ICE staff that he’d had headaches since the 2017 fall and increasing pain in his eye, for which he had been prescribed ibuprofen.
On Oct. 26, he again requested an optometrist, and on Oct. 30, he filed a grievance regarding the quality of his health care. A few days later, ICE officials ruled in favor of the agency, staff wrote.
On Nov. 5, Gordon had an appointment with ICE medical staff to follow up on the eye specialist’s recommendations. Two weeks later, he reported the silicon oil in his eye “feels like it is about to drip on the floor.” On Dec. 28, he complained to ICE staff in the clinic about the delay in taking it out.
“Silicon oil implant in the right eye is shifted and feels the condition is worsening,” ICE medical staff noted. “He said the previous ophthalmologist had informed him to ensure that implant was removed within 3 months, but every time he had an appointment with the ophthalmologist, he was informed they couldn’t continue his care.”
In January, Gordon said he had “aching” and “constant” pain and that his vision had diminished because of the silicon “covering his eye.” On Jan. 7, Dr. Carolyn Chen recommended washing out the silicon and expedited surgery, including to repair a tear and remove scar tissue on his retina, as well as cataracts. She said he was at risk of glaucoma with “significant emulsified” silicon oil in his eye.
“Patient has significant visual decline,” she wrote. “Retinal hole can progress to retinal detachment and visual loss without urgent treatment.”
The surgery never happened.
‘Hard for me to take in’
ICE was trying to send Gordon back to Sierra Leone, which has been sanctioned for slow-walking its acceptance of deportees from the U.S. Last spring, a consular official interviewed him for his travel documents even as he was appealing his deportation.
“I think they were trying to deport me without doing the surgery,” Gordon said.
By July, he had filed a third grievance and could not see anything out of his right eye. His mother hired a new attorney, Brian Bates, who wrote to Gordon’s deportation officer and asked ICE to allow the surgery or release him on bond so that his family could pay for the operation. Bates included more than 60 pages of medical records ICE had maintained, including the recommendations for urgent surgery.
“Continuing to detain him without proper medical treatment of his condition is unacceptable,” the attorney wrote.
The agency did not respond for two months. In September, an ICE officer told Bates over the phone that Gordon’s parole had been denied, but that he would receive the operation. On Sept. 24, Gordon saw an ophthalmologist, who finally removed the silicon. It had been in his eye for 13 months, and doctors told Gordon the buildup of fluid had caused significant damage. His retina had once again detached.
“My eye basically was gone,” Gordon said.
In October, an ophthalmologist told him that his condition had deteriorated such that doctors may have to remove the eye entirely to relieve his pain. It was all but certain he would never regain his sight.
“It’s very hard for me to take in,” Gordon said.
That month, ICE confirmed in writing that he would not be released on bond, saying, “medical care specific to your client’s needs available in Sierra Leone.”
Pablo Paez, a spokesman for GEO Group, which operates the Conroe facility, said all medical services at that detention center are provided through ICE’s Health Services Corps, which cares for about a quarter of people — 13,500 — in immigrant custody. GEO and other private prison companies largely contract with another provider, a company known as Wellpath, that has come under its own scrutiny for troublesome health care practices.
Though Gordon signed a waiver allowing ICE to discuss his medical condition, the agency declined. In a statement, ICE said it takes “very seriously allegations of substandard medical care in our detention facilities.” Despite the long record of complaints Gordon and his attorney have filed with ICE since October 2018, the agency maintained that it learned of the issue only in October 2019 when the Houston Chronicle inquired about it.
“ICE is currently looking into the veracity of these allegations,” its statement said.
A month later, an ICE spokesman had no update on that investigation.
In Houston, Gordon’s mother sobs for her only child. He has now been in ICE custody for 15 months and recently was photographed for a passport for Sierra Leone. His asylum case was denied in September, though he is appealing that decision.
“Yes, he did commit a crime,” the mother said. “But does that mean he should lose his eye?”
“Yes, he did commit a crime. But does that mean he should lose his eye?” Kadiatu Lamin, Mohamed Gordon’s mother