Human Rights Watch released a report this week detailing how the system of neglect that plagues the U.S. immigration detention system particularly hurts female detainees.
The report's findings reiterate problems that over the past year have been revealed to span the entire detention system and have contributed to the deaths of nearly 90 immigrants in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody since 2003. Those include the immigration agency's failure to provide basic or adequate health services, and extensive delays between requests for medical assistance and treatment.
This lack of medical care takes a particularly serious toll on the health of detained women. Human Rights Watch interviewed women who said they were denied gynecological care even after receiving news of an abnormal Pap smear, who were refused birth control pills that had been prescribed to address medical concerns other than contraception, who were denied mammograms, who did not receive adequate care during pregnancy, who were separated from nursing infants, and who had to beg to receive sanitary pads during their periods.
Certain themes arose again and again in our interviews and demand attention. Detained women did not have accurate information about available health services. Care and treatment were often delayed and sometimes denied. Confidentiality of medical information was often breached. Women had trouble directly accessing facility health clinics and persuading security guards that they needed medical attention. Interpreters were not always available during exams. Security guards were sometimes inside exam rooms, invading privacy and encroaching on the patient-provider relationship. Some women feared retaliation or negative consequences to their immigration cases if they sought care. A few were not given the option to refuse medication or received other inappropriate treatment. Full medical records were not available when the detained women were transferred or released. Written complaints about medical care through facility grievance procedures went ignored. The list goes on.
Human Rights Watch makes numerous recommendations about how the U.S. government should address the human rights abuses occurring in its immigrant detention facilities, including several gender-specific recommendations.
Read the full Human Rights Watch report
More reports on treatment of women in immigrant detention:
The National Immigrant Justice Center was among the first to report on the lack of care for women in immigrant detention in a 2007 briefing paper for the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Migrants.