Union-Tribune Editorial

Detaining the mentally ill

Probe to gauge how immigration detainees are treated
May 19, 2009

The conditions under which some mentally ill detainees of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement are held in San Diego County may sound appalling, but it is unclear whether they are improper for the circumstances. An independent probe by the state Department of Public Health, initiated yesterday, is needed to determine whether the detainees are being treated properly.

According to a lawyer for Disability Rights California, an advocacy group, the detainees are uniformly shackled to their beds 24 hours a day, prohibited from watching television, making telephone calls or seeing or communicating with family members. California's strict patients' rights laws specify that psychiatric patients can have daily visitors, use the telephone, exercise, socialize and be free from restraint unless the chief of the facility determines that a specific individual is a threat to himself or others.

The CEO of Alvarado Parkway Institute, the private La Mesa hospital that accepts the detainees under contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, did not dispute the general outline of the conditions described by the advocacy group. Rather, in an interview with San Diego Union-Tribune reporter Greg Moran, he said the measures were required by Immigration and Customs Enforcement for security reasons and were in full compliance with state and federal laws and regulations.

He said the detainees are taken to Alvarado Parkway if they are deemed too sick to be treated at the private immigration jail on Otay Mesa run by Corrections Corporation of America under contract with the government. Although the number of mentally ill immigration detainees at Alvarado Parkway at any one time seems to range from as few as two to only five or so, their situation needs to be addressed quickly

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