Disease plagues illegal immigrants; basic hygiene, lack of medications blamed


**FILE** A group of immigrants from Honduras and El Salvador who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally are stopped in Granjeno, Texas, on June 25, 2014. Since October, the Border Patrol’s Rio Grande Valley sector has made more than 194,000 arrests, ... more >

By Stephen Dinan - The Washington Times - Updated: 11:10 a.m. on Monday, October 6, 2014

Communicable diseases continue to be a problem at the New Mexico facility built to house illegal immigrant families surging across the U.S.-Mexico border, and the immigrants themselves aren’t taking their own health care very seriously, according to an audit released Monday.

While the Border Patrol is doing a good job of handling the surge of illegal immigrant children traveling alone without their parents, the families who are being housed at a special facility continue to have health problems and trouble using the bathroom, the Homeland Security inspector general said.

“Family unit illnesses and unfamiliarity with bathroom facilities continued to result in unsanitary conditions,” Inspector General John Roth wrote in a memo to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson.
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Mr. Roth said the illnesses — which put the facility in Artesia, New Mexico, on lockdown earlier this year, preventing any immigrants from being transferred in or out — have proved to be a continuing problem.

Part of the issue is the immigrants themselves, some of whom have never seen a doctor before, don’t follow up afterward, either for themselves or their children.

“If detainees do not attend sick call or stand in line to receive daily medications, they remain sick and their illnesses tend to get worse,” the inspector general said.

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The inspector general has been reviewing how U.S. Customs and Border Protection, a part of the Homeland Security Department, has handled the surge of children that began to spike earlier this year.

Immigrant-rights groups had filed dozens of complaints arguing children had been physically or verbally abused by agents and officers, but the inspector general has not yet been able to substantiate any of those complaints and said in its own random interviews it hasn’t uncovered any new complaints about wrongdoing.

The surge of children has dropped dramatically, from about 10,000 a month in May and June down to fewer than 4,000 in August — and the numbers appear to have remained low in September, the inspector general said.

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