As U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement responds to media reports and Congressional testimony about poor medical care in its detention facilities, its representatives have been selective about what parts of the agency's medical coverage they discuss.

The Congressional Quarterly reported this week that detention reform advocates are calling the government to account for misleading Congress and the public about the medical benefits detainees receive through the Department of Immigrant Health Services (DIHS) managed care plan:

Julie L. Myers, assistant secretary of Homeland Security for ICE, testified June 4 that the agency's health care service is focused on emergency care for the roughly 32,000 immigrants in custody.

 

Myers then says in her written testimony that other medical conditions "that the local treating physicians believe would cause suffering or deterioration of a detainee`s health are also assessed and evaluated through the [Department of Immigrant Health Services Managed Care Program]."

But Myers' testimony, as well as testimony by the Assistant Director for Management of the ICE Office of Detention and Removal Operations Gary Mead before House Judiciary Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security and International Law Subcommittee in October 2007, fails to address the crux of the Department of Immigrant Health Services (DIHS) policy for non-emergency care. The DIHS Benefits Package states: "Other medical conditions which the physician believes, if left untreated during the period of ICE/[Border Patrol] custody, would cause deterioration of the detainee's health or uncontrolled suffering affecting his/her deportation status will be assessed and evaluated for care."

This policy concerns doctors as much as detention reform advocates, Congressional Quarterly reports:

Critics, including those in the medical profession, say it is irresponsible to use removal status or other non-medical benchmarks in determining whether to assess or treat a sick detainee.

 

The practice "places the ICE providers in ethical jeopardy and professional society jeopardy because what it means is that these doctors and nurses are including criteria that is not in the best interest of their patients," Homer D. Venters, a program physician with the New York University Program for Survivors of Torture, said in an interview.

Apparently, even ICE's faulty policy of keeping detainees just healthy enough to be deported isn't necessarily fulfilled inside the detention facilities, where ICE officers and county jail staff are the ones with ultimate control over detainees' fate.

The Tahoma Organizer this week posted a letter from a detained woman who witnessed pregnant detainees being mistreated and neglected:

Immigration has stated that they don't care that these women are pregnant or sick. Immigration has told them: "You will be deported to your country." And one of the women asked: "In this condition that I am in? I will not be able to travel like this." And with cruelty they respond: "It doesn't matter; you have to leave this country regardless if the doctor says that you cannot travel."

Perhaps ICE representatives are reluctant to address the limitations of DIHS health care coverage because they know that placing such low value on human life is unacceptable to most Americans. DIHS sets exceptionally low standards for the level of health care men, women, and children in ICE custody can receive - the failure of jail staff to meet even these paltry expectations is a human rights violation.