5/7/2023 0 Comments Ice diarey![]() ![]() “They didn’t give me everything that was prescribed to me.” Half a dozen former detainees echoed the sentiment.ĭr. “They sure shortchanged us,” one man deported to Cambodia in 2019 told Capital & Main. In other instances, ICE staff have failed to send a sufficient supply of detainees’ prescribed medications to cover the transfer or deportation period, as required by agency policy. Then in 2019, an ICE official repeated: “Medications should not be put in a detainee's property.”Īsthma inhalers and diabetic insulin are among the medications improperly withheld from detainees during transport, according to the ICE documents. "Medication continues to be stored in the subject's property, which is the incorrect practice," an ICE official said in a 2016 meeting. ICE sometimes packs detainees’ prescription drugs in the cargo area of the plane, making them inaccessible during flight. Michele Heisler, medical director of the nonprofit Physicians for Human Rights, said that given ICE’s track record, it would be “very difficult, if not impossible, to protect people from the coronavirus” during the pandemic, especially since the agency is “continuing to move people from facility to facility in tiny little planes without adequate securities.”Īt least one flight, last June, moved COVID-19 positive detainees into a facility where it “spread like wildfire,” according to a federal lawsuit lodged by a group of detainees.Īdditionally, ICE field offices across the country have been reprimanded by agency officials at least a dozen times since 2016 for failing to provide medications to detainee passengers. But “they told me that since I was in quarantine, I was ready to get on a plane.”ĭr. Because at the time they had not done any more tests,” Marta said. ![]() After Marta informed her, the nurse consulted with ICE officials on board. Yet, when ICE Air Operations, the agency’s aviation logistics unit, put Marta on a jet in July, she said the flight nurse didn’t have any record of her COVID-19 diagnosis and was unaware that she could still be infectious. ![]() Marta’s story illustrates one common issue identified in the internal records: ICE staff have repeatedly neglected to get advance approval before transporting detainees with medical conditions, including people who were exposed to infectious diseases.ĭuring the pandemic, ICE says, every flight has an extra medical provider on board, and before detainees are cleared for travel, a medical professional reviews each medical record. And agency staff are well aware of the problem, which has come up more than 100 times during internal meetings from 2016 to 2019. On board ICE flights, the agency frequently fails to provide adequate care. But mismanagement, an opaque privatized flight system and issues with the agency’s formal complaint system have allowed problems to persist outside of public view.ĭespite outcry from activists and warnings from medical professionals, ICE has continued flying immigration detainees across the country and around the world throughout the pandemic on a network of private planes. ICE has been aware of these problems since at least 2016, according to the agency records. But even before the pandemic complicated safe transport, the agency consistently failed to provide adequate medical care to detainees on its chartered jets, sometimes leading to dire health outcomes. ICE says it has ramped up health screenings and sanitation measures on its flights to prevent spreading the coronavirus. Heart attacks, miscarriages and even a death have all occurred on ICE flights since 2012, according to complaints filed with the agency. Marta’s story isn’t an anomaly of the current crisis - it exemplifies a broader pattern of medical negligence on ICE flights, a Capital & Main investigation has found. But a few weeks later in July, the agency put her on one of its chartered jets with dozens of other detainees. ICE didn’t retest Marta, who asked that her real name not be used for fear of retaliation. The detention center clinic gave her pills to suppress her cough, she said. By late June, she had tested positive for COVID-19. In February, when her cross-country journeys started, ICE knew Marta’s lupus and asthma could increase her risk of contracting the virus and experiencing severe symptoms. After five months of being shuttled among various federal detention facilities, she was worried about infecting others. Immigration and Customs Enforcement flew Marta across the country, she feared catching the coronavirus. ![]()
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