finish last two parts
fionahu1998
_ImmigrantdetaineesinCaliforniadetentioncenters.docxProject Topic and Title: Immigrant detainees in California detention centers
Fill in this team plan outline (bullet points are fine) to address each of the main areas in your PBL research project. Provide enough information to communicate your approach and any research sources you plan to use. Include the name(s) of team members who are responsible for each area.
I. Assessment of the population (who, what, where) (name/s)
· immigrant detainees in California detention centers
II. Problem relevance (why this is important) (name/s)
· Because they are not US citizens, they do not have the same access to healthcare
III. Ethical significance (ethical concerns, e.g. health disparity) (name/s)
· The lack of respect and basic human decency for them not being citizens
· The lack of health care based on how society views them
IV. Evaluate Relevant Physiology & Pathophysiology (impacting population) (name/s)
· Experiencing major health issues due to lack of care in their home countries
· The domestic medical service system is slow
· Journey to come to US can be physically and mentally impacting on their health
· Infants, babies, and pregnant women require extra care
V. Patient-Centered Treatment Plan (consider all aspects of care, physical, psychological, emotional, etc., and what is needed to support this population) (name/s)
· Need safe and clean accommodations
· Access to more medical personnel such as doctors and nurses
· Access to mental health personnel
· Access to a healthy diet
· Access to a fair degree of medical treatment
· Access to interpreters
· Family companionship and encouragement
VI. Research Findings and Recommendations (must include data and references) (name/s)
A. Planned data source (so far)
· Website articles
· Organization’s websites
B. References (so far)
https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/06/20/us-poor-medical-care-deaths-immigrant-detention#
https://thecounter.org/immigrations-customs-enforcement-ice-detainees-food/
VII. Presentation (all team members must contribute; list out plan for each team member)
A. Type of visual aid for presentation (e.g. poster, video, brochure, ppt, etc..)
Google Slides presentation
B. Ideas to make presentation Meaningful (Creative/ Interactive/ Moving/ Motivating)
We can include a story or stories from immigrants who have been in detention centers in order to humanize their experience.
Information for PowerPoint:
Background: https://www.detentionwatchnetwork.org/issues/detention-101
· Immigration detention is the practice of incarcerating immigrants while they await a determination of their immigration status or potential deportation. In 2016, the United States government detained nearly 360,000 people in a sprawling system of over 200 immigration jails across the country.
· After three decades of expansion, the detention system now captures and holds as many as 400,000 immigrants each year.
· The Trump administration has further expanded these parts of the deportation dragnet — increasing the number of 287(g) agreements and other forms of entanglement with local law enforcement and the criminal legal system — while also ramping up community raids and eliminating the policies that deprioritized detention and deportation for some immigrants under the previous administration.
· Immigrants in detention include undocumented and documented immigrants, many who have been in the U.S. for years and are now facing exile, as well as survivors of torture, asylum seekers and other vulnerable groups including children, pregnant women, and individuals who are seriously ill.
· In detention, immigrants are often subjected to harsh conditions of confinement and denied access to adequate medical care, legal counsel and family contact. Since 2003, a reported 180 people have died in immigration custody.
· https://www.freedomforimmigrants.org/detention-statistics
· According to federal government data from April 2019, Texas (14,481), Louisiana (4,415), Arizona (4,405), California (4,353), and Georgia (3,719), are the top five states with the largest number of people in U.S. immigration detention per day.
· Federal government data obtained by the ILRC indicate that, on average, immigrant prisons and jails are holding people for longer periods of time under the Trump administration than under the Obama administration. In FY 2017, the average length of stay at any one immigrant prison or jail was 34 days, compared to 22 days in FY 2016 and 21 days in FY 201
· Figure 1: “Freedom For Immigrants - Documented Abuses.” Freedomforimmigrants.org, 2019, www.freedomforimmigrants.org/detention-statistics.
Treatment Plan
Unhealthy Diet:
· https://thecounter.org/immigrations-customs-enforcement-ice-detainees-food/
· According to guidelines established by ICE, people housed in its detention centers are required to be served nutritious food three times a day. Meals are supposed to be served in “as unregimented a manner as possible,” meaning detainees have at least 20 minutes to sit and eat. The agency is supposed to accommodate religious and dietary requirements, including kosher and halal options, and the schedules of people who fast for religious reasons.
· There are other rules, too, some of which seem self-evident: Food should not be used as punishment or reward, and hot meals should be served hot.
· In private facilities, where many are housed, ICE contractors could potentially eke out a little extra profit by cutting costs and skimping on food quantity and quality. Even in publicly-run institutions, some districts contract with private food-service providers, where the same profit motives can come into play.
· A December 2017 report from the department’s Office of the Inspector General shows that agency inspectors visited six facilities and found “spoiled, wilted, and moldy produce” as well as “expired frozen food, including meat.” Just a few months earlier, a separate report out of the same office revealed similar findings at a detention center in California: “Detainees were being served, and reported being regularly served, meat that appeared to be spoiled.”
· But in the eyes of the law, spoiled food alone doesn’t make a great case. If you can’t prove past-its-prime ham has caused serious medical conditions like massive, widespread weight loss or facility-wide gastrointestinal infections, it’s difficult to make a case for cruel and unusual punishment.
· The Office of the Inspector General lacks the authority, she says, to enforce its suggestions once reports are issued. When agencies have all the evidence in hand and refuse to make changes, legal advocates try to compel the courts to force improvements.
· As ICE began contracting with county jails and federal prisons for more beds, it agreed to allow detainees under its care to be treated in much the same way as inmates in those facilities. From an administrative perspective, it makes a sense: ICE has a better chance of negotiating bed space in a county jail if its detainees don’t require lots of extra attention.
· The treatment plan for unhealthy diet:
Medical Personnel:
· They also found numerous examples of systemic substandard and dangerous medical practices in other cases—such as overreliance on unqualified medical staff, delays in emergency responses, and requests for care unreasonably delayed.
· In 2009, Human Rights Watch issued Detained and Dismissed: Women’s Struggles to Obtain Health Care in United States Immigration Detention, documenting dozens of cases in which detention center medical staff caused suffering and jeopardized women’s health by either failing to respond at all to the medical problems of women in detention or responding only after considerable delays
· Some of these companies have been the subject of lawsuits or investigations alleging negligent medical care due to use of undertrained or unqualified medical staff. In 2015, Corizon, one of the country’s largest for-profit prison healthcare providers, and Alameda County in California settled a wrongful death lawsuit involving a jail inmate who died in the midst of alcohol withdrawal. The lawsuit alleged that an LVN put the inmate into the general population without alcohol withdrawal treatment, and that Corizon had hired LVNs instead of registered nurses to cut costs.[74] In 2014, the New York State Attorney General came to a settlement agreement with Correctional Medical Care, a private prison health care contractor that provided medical services in jails in 13 New York counties, after an investigation in which the attorney general found “the company understaffed facilities and shifted work hours from physicians and dentists to less qualified and lower-wage staff.”
· On the evening of July 29, ICE transferred Rodriguez to Rio Grande Valley Staging (RGVS), an ICE facility operated by Ahtna Technical Services, which holds immigrants for periods under 12 hours immediately prior to their removal to their country of citizenship, in Rodriguez’s case, Honduras. Several hours after his arrival, a licensed vocational nurse documented that he had a headache and blood pressure of 172/90. She said he also told her that he had high blood pressure and he had informed BCDC staff about the hypertension medication in his property bag. The nurse searched the property bag, and found the tablets for hypertension, but left them in the bag. She told him she would recheck his blood pressure in an hour but took no other action. Three hours later, a nurse checked Rodriguez’s blood pressure again and found it to be 200/110. The ICE review fails to note what the nurse did at this point. Then, at a time unspecified in the ICE report, Rodriguez collapsed, complaining of right shoulder pain and a headache. A nurse noted that his right arm and right leg were twitching. The nurse called emergency medical services and he was transported to a hospital emergency department. He quickly fell into a coma and was pronounced brain dead the next day.
· Both experts flagged delays faced by a man in Imperial Regional Detention Facility in California who requested emergency help because of a severe tooth pain that he rated as pain level 10 on a scale of 1-10. He saw a nurse who gave him some pain medication and was initially told he would see a dentist later that day, but the patient did not actually see a dentist until four days later.[149] Dr. Babaria further noted that the dentist eventually diagnosed him with a periodontal abscess, which, left untreated, could have spread to the rest of the body and developed into sepsis. She believes given the severity if his pain, he should have been seen by a dentist that same day
· Both medical experts flagged the case of Carlos H., held in Yuba County Jail in California, as particularly egregious. His torn ligament and severe knee pain went unaddressed for months while he repeatedly saw a licensed vocational nurse
Lack of Interpreters:
· In May 2016, CIVIC filed a multi-party complaint with the Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties summarizing complaints from 61 men and women detained at Hudson County Correctional Facility, which include allegations of long delays in receiving care and repeated failures by medical staff to use interpretation services for non-English speaking patients, among others
· All versions of the detention standards applicable in US immigration detention facilities require health care providers to obtain translation assistance, through a telephone translation service if necessary, but lack of language access continues to be an issue for immigrants seeking medical care in detention.[165] Laura Redman, director of the Health Justice Program at New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, told Human Rights Watch that several of the organization’s clients never received the detainee handbook telling them how to make a sick call request, and that many, particularly those who did not read or write English, were dependent on acquaintances to make sick call requests.[166] She noted that although facilities have a telephonic “language line” available facility staff can call for interpretation assistance, their clients told them staff rarely called the line
·
Medical Treatment:
While in detention centers, detainees are under the care of the U.S. government and have a responsibility to ensure basic welfare of the detainees. According to a 2019 California Department of Justice report, “Common issues we found include medical record accuracy and accessibility, nurses practicing outside their legal scope of practice, superficial medical examination, delayed or inadequate medical care, inadequate mental health staffing and services, and unsafe suicide watch and disciplinary isolation (solitary confinement) practices (1).” A report from Human Rights Watch states that while medical care is required in all facilities, the organization describes discrepancies in the actual terms or specifics that are laid out for each facility. While one facility may have very specific terms about what medical care is required and the required qualifications of medical staff, the detention center in Adelanto, California simply states the medical care requirement to be , “[m]edical coverage at the facility…[for]no less than twenty-four (24) hours per day, seven (7) days per week, (2)” and there are no specifications about qualifications for medical personnel. This vagueness can lead to poor medical care for detainees and inconsistent care between detention centers. Our treatment plan for medical treatment is medical care specification that should be applied to all detention facilities in california. The specification will include an adequate number of medical personnel per number of detainees, clear qualifications for medical personnel and clear guidelines when 3rd party medical facilities are needed. Additionally, the outline should also include the responsibility to act quickly in the case of necessary medical attention.
(1) https://oag.ca.gov/sites/all/files/agweb/pdfs/publications/immigration-detention-2019.pdf
· Seven California detainees plus multiple nonprofits filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration in August of 2019 for subpar medicacare in ICE detention centers. They claim detainees are placed in isolation as punishment and their medical conditions are ignored or mistreated. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-08-19/immigrant-detention-medical-care-lawsuit
· In March of 2019, detainees staged a hunger strike in Adelanto, CA demanding speedier access to good medical care. https://khn.org/news/watchdogs-cite-lax-medical-and-mental-health-treatment-of-ice-detainees/
Mental Health:
While many detainees experience physical health problems in the detention centers, others experience mental health issues which, historically, have not been treated in many detention centers. It’s not only important to consider those that come into the detention facilities with mental health problems but also to consider the mental health impact that detention itself can have on immigrants. A 2019 report from the Project on Government Oversight claims that there are 6,559 records of detainees being placed in isolation and about 40% of those records were detainees with mental illness. Prolonged solitary confinement is consider more than 15 days and more than 4,000 of those records show the detainee was in solitary confinement for longer than 15 days. Solitary confinement has been shown to greatly exacerbate mental illness and trigger the onset of mental illness. That same report cites a study from New York University’s medical school stating that between 2003 and 2015 suicide was one of the top causes of death in ICE detention centers (3). The report also shows that the detention center is Adelanto, California housed the most detainees in solitary confinement than any other detention center. Many detainees’ mental health issues are exacerbated by journey to the detention center and their stay. This can be due to exacerbating circumstances in home country, i.e. war, famine, violence, etc. Also, it can be due to possibly being isolated from family and friends and not having access to peers who speak their own language. Our treatment will consist of banning solitary confinement in detention centers and providing detainees with adequate mental health screenings and further mental health care if necessary.
· “A women at the ICE detention center in Adelanto, California, who was diagnosed with Other Specific Trauma and Stressor-related D/O [disorder],” was released from solitary in December 2017 after 454 days”
· “Another women at Adelanto, who was “diagnosed with PTSD/Major Depressive D/O (severe) was released in August 2017 after 372 days in jail.”
· “A man at Yuba County Jail [functions as a detention center] in California, who was diagnosed with psychotic disorder was release April 2018 after 413 days. (3)”
Cleanliness:
· At the facility, Singh was issued a single uniform. He wore it for two weeks straight without access to laundry or clean clothes.
· we observed detainee bathrooms that were in poor condition, including mold and peeling paint on walls, floors, and showers, and unusable toilets
· mold permeated all walls in the bathroom area, including ceilings, vents, mirrors, and shower stalls. These environmental conditions present health risks as mold and mildew growth, for example, can lead to serious health issues for detainees, including allergic reactions and persistent illnesses.
· ICE has reported improvements to facility conditions, including an extensive and systematic cleaning and renovation of the ICE detainee housing units and improving its provision of toiletries for detainees.
Limitations to Treatment Plan
Conclusion
