Immigration Agency Is Criticized on Health Care

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

MIAMI (AP) — Immigration authorities routinely delay, deny or botch medical care for detained immigrants in poorly equipped facilities nationwide, according to separate reports released Tuesday by two advocacy groups.

Human Rights Watch and the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center say the problems are the result of unskilled or indifferent staff, overcrowding, bureaucracy, language barriers and limited services available to detainees of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. The groups contend that many medical problems could be avoided if the agency, known as ICE, did not lock up people who are elderly, have health issues or lack criminal records.

Advocates argue that alternatives to detention, like requiring people to check in by phone or in person, are "more humane" and cost taxpayers as little as $12 a day, compared with $95 a day to keep someone in custody.

"ICE needlessly detains people with severe illnesses and those who pose no harm to U.S.. communities," said Cheryl Little, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center. "Doing so drives up ICE costs, even as the agency provides increasingly inadequate medical and mental health care to those in its custody."

The agency detained more than 300,000 people in the 2007 fiscal year, with a daily average of nearly 30,000 in custody. Most were held in state and county jails under contracts with the bureau. Some detainees are held for months, even years, though the agency says the average time is 31 days.

The agency responded that its health services division gave detainees general, emergency, dental, chronic and mental health care.

Current and former detainees said members of medical staffs routinely violated their own standards in areas like continuity of care, quick response to medical complaints, explanation of the availability of services, and medical screenings and follow-up care.

Women particularly suffered because routine reproductive care did not get adequate attention in a system that emphasized emergency care and treating conditions that might affect detainees' deportation status, according to the Human Rights Watch study.

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