e all know how the story begins—the aspiration to find a better life for oneself and one’s family encourages a [insert poverty-stricken Central American country here] citizen to brave the vast desert and the treacherous Rio Grande for the manifold bounties of the plains of Texas. The story has two endings: either our hero(ine) successfully avoids the ever-vigilant immigration officer and stealthily assimilates into American society, or he or she is caught. In many cases, it is the latter.
What happens next is a little murkier. The nebulous treatment of the detainees in immigration detention centers is only now coming to light. Just this month, reports have surfaced detailing the mistreatment of women at an Arizona immigration detention center. On January 21, The New York Times reported on a study published by the University of Arizona, which found that over 300 illegal immigrant women suffered from a “lack of prenatal care, treatment for cancer, ovarian cysts and other serious medical conditions, and, in some cases, [were] mixed in with federal prisoners” at a local center. And Arizona is not the only state with these centers—there are 400 of them nationwide.
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement maintains that “strengthening the nation’s capacity to detain and remove criminal and other deportable aliens is a key component of the comprehensive strategy to deter illegal immigration and protect public safety. Detention and removal of illegal aliens is a priority of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). This commitment has been backed by significant resources devoted to detention and removal efforts.”
But according to the Detention Watch Network, both undocumented and documented immigrants, including “families, survivors of torture, asylum seekers, other vulnerable groups including pregnant women, children, and individuals who are seriously ill without proper medication or care,” are held in such centers under less than humane conditions.
The study mentions a young woman from Africa who, despite experiencing severe pain from undergoing female circumcision, was told to “exercise and watch her diet.” After six months, a cyst the size of a five-month-old fetus was found on one of the woman’s ovaries. Another inmate, who had come to the U.S. as a baby, suffered from ovarian cysts while pregnant in the detention center. The center provided her with neither pre-natal vitamins nor a sonogram. Both unsurprising and a testament to the pervasive effects of sexism, the wellbeing of the women detainees was jeopardized to a greater degree than that of the men.
As if that weren’t troubling enough, in 2007 an undocumented trans-woman from Mexico died from AIDS complications in an all-male detention center in Los Angeles, a death hastened by a lack of resources and inadequate medical attention. Twenty-three year old Victoria Arellano (nee Victor) had come to the United States as a child and worked in a Los Angeles supermarket as a teenager. She contracted HIV, but was diagnosed as asymptomatic and prescribed antibiotics that would prevent pneumonia. Homayoon Khanlou, chief of medicine at the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, told the Daily Journal in 2007: “The consequences of taking someone off that medication is that within a few weeks a patient may unfortunately develop pneumonia and then not respond to treatment.” When Arellano was taken to the detention center, she was denied treatment and consequently relapsed.
Although unable to eat or stand by herself and constantly vomiting blood, Arellano was simply told to drink more water and take a few tablets of Tylenol. Despite the rallying of many fellow detention inmates (who would chant “hospital” whenever a guard would order them to line up for a head count), Arellano died on July 20, 2007.
Representatives of the ICE deny any maltreatment, claiming that their medical wherewithal is more than adequate, and their care for the detainees humane. Katrina Kane, the director of the Arizona branch of the ICE, states that the institution “strictly enforce[s] all national ICE standards…and if we find those standards are not being met and we feel the deficiencies are not being corrected, we locate our detainees to other facilities.”
The ICE mission statement as outlined on their website also refutes all of the allegations:
Individuals who have acute or chronic healthcare needs are referred to a primary care provider for medical treatment… Patients with diseases such as HIV/AIDS are treated in accordance with nationally recognized standards and guidelines… pregnant detainees are referred to community obstetrics specialists to assure that appropriate prenatal care is delivered. Each facility housing ICE detainees has a written plan for delivery of 24-hour emergency health care and for provisions of care when immediate outside medical attention is required…
Obviously, the standards to which the ICE holds itself are not being met. The basic health services the ICE advertises seem to be nonexistent. The cases in which refugees and immigrants have been denied medical assistance are beyond troubling. And the fact that this occurs within our borders is unconscionable. Nevertheless, the disregard for human rights afforded to citizens in the case of illegal immigrants is hardly a new phenomenon. The image of the hard-line Freedom Fighter patrolling the vast, barren Arizona-Mexico border is emblazoned into the American psyche. This jingoism masquerading as patriotism is foul and antithetical to the values Americans hold near and dear—values such as the drive to pursue a better life for oneself and one’s family.
The fact that this argument has been bandied about for the past few years does not render it moot. Those sympathetic to immigrants’ plight frequently discuss the patchwork of the American populace as composed mostly of immigrants—a “melting pot.” However, with the recent election, and after two years of intense (yet due) attention, the immigration issue have been put on the back burner. Once a hot-button issue considered as divisive as Iraq, the fate of the “illegals” seems vague, almost beside the point.
Most of the effort is reserved for preventing the influx of illegal aliens; there has been little focus on what happens when the aliens are “caught.” The detainment camps garner no interest because they enter the scene after the fact: the immigrants attempted to cross the border, and they were caught. What happens next seems irrelevant to the story.
By not affording basic health services that would befit any citizen of the developed world, the ICE doubly negates its mission. Although they cannot condone the admission of illegal immigrants into this country, they can and must acknowledge the basic human dignity these detainees deserve. A country that has constantly prided itself on humanitarian efforts and the advancement of democracy abroad must focus its efforts closer to home: the fate and well-being of those who wanted a closer look at the “shining city on a hill” is just as important as that of those who chose not to cross the border.
