As you know, several legal advocacy groups on Monday filed a whistleblower complaint on behalf of a nurse at an ICE detention center documenting “jarring medical neglect” within the facility, including a refusal to test detainees for the novel coronavirus and an exorbitant rate of hysterectomies being performed on immigrant women. Allegations include a lack of informed consent for the gynecological procedures.
In response to the allegations, Director of ICE Health Service Corps, Dr. Ada Rivera said in a statement Wednesday that any assertion or claim that the health, safety and welfare of detainees is not one of their highest priorities is false and intentionally misleading. Don’t even suggest an ICE failure to protect detainees! It’s impossible! MAGA!
However, one month ago, a complaint was filed with allegations contrary to Dr. Ada Rivera’s assertion regarding the priority of detainees’ health, safety and welfare. The complaint filed August 15 alleges that ICE guards have a pattern and practice of sexually assaulting immigrants at an El Paso facility. According to the allegations, ICE guards take advantage of security camera blind spots.
https://www.texastribune.org/...ness-sexual-assault/
Demonstrating the best MAGA! problem solving skills, late Monday evening the U.S. deported a crucial witness in this ongoing investigation into these allegations of sexual assault and harassment, the witness’ lawyers said. The 35-year-old woman had been held in the facility for about a year and told lawyers about the “pattern and practice” of abuse there. Problem solved, right?
https://www.texastribune.org/...ness-sexual-assault/
Last May, a federal lawsuit was filed by a Mexican woman who said she was sexually assaulted and impregnated at an immigrant detention facility in Houston hours before she was deported to Mexico.
While in ICE custody, the plaintiff said she and two other women were taken from their dorms and sequestered to a small room. The woman said three immigration officials entered the room, hit the women in the face, used brutal force and raped each of them. All three were put on a bus and deported back to Mexico within hours of the assault, according to the lawsuit. The impregnated woman is raising her daughter fathered by the ICE guard. MAGA!
https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/...-before-deportation/
This summer ICE flew immigrant detainees to Virginia to facilitate the rapid deployment of Homeland Security tactical teams to Washington, using MAGA! creativity to circumvent restrictions on the use of charter flights for employee travel, according to both a current US official and a former U.S. official. After the transfer of detainees, dozens of the new arrivals tested positive for the novel coronavirus, fueling an outbreak at the Farmville, Va., immigration jail that infected more than 300 inmates, one of whom died. MAGA!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/...454439a44_story.html
ICE has been using major hotel chains to detain children and families taken into custody at the border, creating a largely unregulated shadow system of detention and swift expulsions without the safeguards that are intended to protect the most vulnerable migrants (children).
Children are being put in hotels under the supervision of transportation workers who are not licensed to provide child care. Because the hotels exist outside the formal detention system, they are not subject to policies designed to prevent abuse in federal custody or those requiring that detainees be provided access to phones, healthy food, and medical and mental health care.
Parents and lawyers have no way of finding the children or monitoring their well-being while they are in ICE custody. Searching for the children has been made nearly impossible because ICE has not assigned identification numbers that would normally allow families to track their locations in the highly regulated federal detention system. Lost kids! MAGA!
Two laws weigh heavily on the treatment of detained migrant children. The Prison Rape Elimination Act and the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act. Neither of these protections appear to apply to the informal hotel stays.
“A transportation vendor should not be in charge of changing the diaper of a 1-year old, giving bottles to babies or dealing with the traumatic effects they might be dealing with,” said Andrew Lorenzen-Strait, another former deputy assistant director for custody management at ICE.
“I’m worried kids may be exposed to abuse, neglect, including sexual abuse, and we will have no idea,” he said.
ICE officials provided a statement explaining that workers (privately contracted) managing the hotel stays are trained in the requirements of the Prison Rape Elimination Act, but they are not contractually required to follow its rules.
The statement said company employees are instructed “extensively” on how to handle situations where detained migrants would be left particularly vulnerable in their presence, such as when the migrants are bathing or breastfeeding. It says red flags indicating potential torture or abuse could be reported to the guards, who would then share the information with ICE. But there appear to be no mechanisms for detainees to report abuse by guards, except to other guards.
An ICE spokesman said no more than two children could be housed in a hotel room at any given time, but at least one migrant teenager said he was detained overnight in a hotel room in Miami with two other young migrants and three guards.
https://www.nytimes.com/...els-coronavirus.html
MAGA, right?
In response to the allegations, Director of ICE Health Service Corps, Dr. Ada Rivera said in a statement Wednesday that any assertion or claim that the health, safety and welfare of detainees is not one of their highest priorities is false and intentionally misleading. Don’t even suggest an ICE failure to protect detainees! It’s impossible! MAGA!
However, one month ago, a complaint was filed with allegations contrary to Dr. Ada Rivera’s assertion regarding the priority of detainees’ health, safety and welfare. The complaint filed August 15 alleges that ICE guards have a pattern and practice of sexually assaulting immigrants at an El Paso facility. According to the allegations, ICE guards take advantage of security camera blind spots.
https://www.texastribune.org/...ness-sexual-assault/
Demonstrating the best MAGA! problem solving skills, late Monday evening the U.S. deported a crucial witness in this ongoing investigation into these allegations of sexual assault and harassment, the witness’ lawyers said. The 35-year-old woman had been held in the facility for about a year and told lawyers about the “pattern and practice” of abuse there. Problem solved, right?
https://www.texastribune.org/...ness-sexual-assault/
Last May, a federal lawsuit was filed by a Mexican woman who said she was sexually assaulted and impregnated at an immigrant detention facility in Houston hours before she was deported to Mexico.
While in ICE custody, the plaintiff said she and two other women were taken from their dorms and sequestered to a small room. The woman said three immigration officials entered the room, hit the women in the face, used brutal force and raped each of them. All three were put on a bus and deported back to Mexico within hours of the assault, according to the lawsuit. The impregnated woman is raising her daughter fathered by the ICE guard. MAGA!
https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/...-before-deportation/
This summer ICE flew immigrant detainees to Virginia to facilitate the rapid deployment of Homeland Security tactical teams to Washington, using MAGA! creativity to circumvent restrictions on the use of charter flights for employee travel, according to both a current US official and a former U.S. official. After the transfer of detainees, dozens of the new arrivals tested positive for the novel coronavirus, fueling an outbreak at the Farmville, Va., immigration jail that infected more than 300 inmates, one of whom died. MAGA!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/...454439a44_story.html
ICE has been using major hotel chains to detain children and families taken into custody at the border, creating a largely unregulated shadow system of detention and swift expulsions without the safeguards that are intended to protect the most vulnerable migrants (children).
Children are being put in hotels under the supervision of transportation workers who are not licensed to provide child care. Because the hotels exist outside the formal detention system, they are not subject to policies designed to prevent abuse in federal custody or those requiring that detainees be provided access to phones, healthy food, and medical and mental health care.
Parents and lawyers have no way of finding the children or monitoring their well-being while they are in ICE custody. Searching for the children has been made nearly impossible because ICE has not assigned identification numbers that would normally allow families to track their locations in the highly regulated federal detention system. Lost kids! MAGA!
Two laws weigh heavily on the treatment of detained migrant children. The Prison Rape Elimination Act and the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act. Neither of these protections appear to apply to the informal hotel stays.
“A transportation vendor should not be in charge of changing the diaper of a 1-year old, giving bottles to babies or dealing with the traumatic effects they might be dealing with,” said Andrew Lorenzen-Strait, another former deputy assistant director for custody management at ICE.
“I’m worried kids may be exposed to abuse, neglect, including sexual abuse, and we will have no idea,” he said.
ICE officials provided a statement explaining that workers (privately contracted) managing the hotel stays are trained in the requirements of the Prison Rape Elimination Act, but they are not contractually required to follow its rules.
The statement said company employees are instructed “extensively” on how to handle situations where detained migrants would be left particularly vulnerable in their presence, such as when the migrants are bathing or breastfeeding. It says red flags indicating potential torture or abuse could be reported to the guards, who would then share the information with ICE. But there appear to be no mechanisms for detainees to report abuse by guards, except to other guards.
An ICE spokesman said no more than two children could be housed in a hotel room at any given time, but at least one migrant teenager said he was detained overnight in a hotel room in Miami with two other young migrants and three guards.
https://www.nytimes.com/...els-coronavirus.html
MAGA, right?