Thread: Roy Beck..YES to Decent Health Care for Illegals in Detent

YES to Decent Health Care for Illegals in Detention -- But Don't Use Issue To Slow Deportations

By Roy Beck, Tuesday, June 3, 2008, 10:40 PM

ICE Chief Julie Myers goes before a congressional panel Wednesday to answer charges such as the baseless accusation that she is allowing "immigrants in detention (to) languish without lawyers and decent medical care even when they are mortally ill," as the New York Times stated in an editorial today (June 3).

When I talked with her in the afternoon, she was perplexed at what looks to be a coordinated onslaught by the nation's most prestigious media and the nation's immigration lawyers. They appear dedicated to shutting down much of our country's system for detaining already arrested illegal aliens after they are arrested, which is important to ensure that the arrested aliens show up for deportation hearings.

ILLEGAL ALIENS DESERVE HUMANE TREATMENT
I will admit to you that when the Big Media unveiled their investigative series on health care in detention centers last month, I asked my NumbersUSA staff to look into the possibility of taking a public stand to decry the abuse that was described in those reports.

NumbersUSA's position has always been that illegal aliens should be treated humanely as they are detected, detained and deported. I believe strongly that an advanced civilization goes to great lengths to ensure the physical safety of those it incarcerates. When individuals' freedoms are taken away through jailing, the state must take on every responsibility to ensure that they are not harmed due to their own lack of individual freedom to defend themselves.,


My position remains that if there is a problem with detention health care, it should be fixed. But any such problem should not be used in any way to hamper efforts to remove and drive illegal aliens from this country.

I will be interested to see if any of the Congress Members trip up Chief Myers. Under my stream of questions today, she certainly made a strong case that most of the charges of bad health treatment are false or misleading, and that the legitimate cases that have been raised were in the past before ICE instituted new procedures last year and early this year. (I'll give you examples below.)

OPEN-BORDERS FOLKS TRYING TO SLOW DEPORTATIONS
But first, I need to note that Chief Myers is too polite -- and too politically astute -- to say what is really going on with this hearing and all these news stories.

That is, the sudden spotlight on health care for detained illegal aliens has almost nothing to do with health and almost everything to do with the open-borders crowd desperately attempting to slow down the accelerating enforcement across the nation as unleashed by Myers and her enthusiastic ICE team.

The last thing the open-borders crowd wants is for the public to see that real enforcement is possible. That it causes a lot of other illegal aliens to decide to pack up. That American workers are available to fill the jobs vacated by the arrested and fleeing illegal workers.

Myers and her ICE team in the past year are proving that illegal immigration is not inevitable and can be controlled.

NO SUICIDE IN 15 MONTHS
The Washington Post did a huge multi-day investigative series last month detailing what it said were examples of incredibly bad health care for illegal aliens who are put into federal detention centers. The New York Times and CBS's 60 Minutes quickly followed suit, followed by a number of other media across the country.

One of the themes was that the trauma of being arrested and detained for breaking immigration laws is so great that many commit suicides and that ICE has been negligent in stopping them.

I was a little surprised today when Myers told me that despite having tens of thousands of detainees, there has been NO suicide in 15 months! And the rate before was low.

This variation with the news reporting apparently can be found up and down the list of grievances. In most cases, the anecdotal evidence of problems reported by the media were representative of situations that in aggregate have been at much lower rates than found in jails nationwide. And the health care of illegal aliens in most cases appears to be far superior to what American citizens get when they are in jail.

CLEARING UP SOME HEALTH PROBLEMS
Despite the fact that deaths in custody and other health measures among illegal alien detentions were well below national averages, Chief Myers said she and other officials came to believe that there were too many cases of health care problems that shouldn't have happened.

Last October, ICE took over the health care management from another agency and immediately instituted a number of new procedures.

Myers acknowledged that some of the problems portrayed in the news reports had been real. But she said they occurred before the new ICE procedures.

One of my biggest concerns was what appeared to be evidence of massive vacancies in the health care staffs at detention centers and what looked like neglect of urgent requests from health professionals there for reinforcements.

Myers acknowledged that both vacancies and responses to requests had been a problem. But since ICE took over in October, staff vacancies have improved from 30% to 18%, and medical requests are handled quickly by internet.

Months before the media reports came out, ICE had instituted oversight by outside doctors and required better record-keeping on patients, she said.

The media have been almost distraught about the fact that ICE has sedated unruly illegal aliens before deporting them on planes with civilian passengers. Myers said Great Britain won't sedate such deportees, so any illegal alien can avoid deportation by simply making a scene at the airport.

Nonetheless, Myers said she wasn't happy that the sedations had been taking place without clear record keeping and court orders. Now, a court makes the judgment about whether a deportee should be sedated.

SHOULD ILLEGALS GET BEST CARE IN AMERICA?
Chief Myers repeatedly said that the media have completely distorted the care that illegal aliens get in detention. Nonetheless, she said that although the overall statistics are excellent, she has discovered some individual instances in the past of "poor medical judgment that outrage me." She said she is committed to instituting procedures to prevent such instances from re-occurring.

Well, many citizens may feel that Myers is bending over too far backwards and providing more expensive health care to illegal aliens than is justified when tens of millions of American citizens get worse care. That imbalance may get worse after the congressional hearings.

A lot of the criticism of the detention centers is that they fail to do intensive dianostic testting to discover health problems that are not apparent and which the detainees don't know they have. It is as if every one of them deserves consideration by TV's Dr. House.

We have to remember that the average detainee is incarcerated for only 37 days. Shouldn't the responsibility be to ensure that they get:

care for any medical emergencies that occur during their stay
a continuation of any medications they were on before they were arrested
additional medications and care for chronic health problems (such as diabetes, high blood pressure) that are easily diagnosed once inside but for which they were not previously treated, in order to try to prevent their health from getting worse while in custody.
Chief Myers said all of these are being provided fully and that new procedures were put in place some time ago to make sure that newly arrested illegal aliens don't stop taking medications they were using just prior to their arrests.

Here's the challenge for ICE: Illegal aliens have terrible health. Of those arrested, 34% are diagnosed with chronic health problems, Myers said. ICE is already spending $100 million of taxpayers' money a year to treat the illegal aliens during their 37-day stays. Most of these illegal aliens would have gotten NO treatment on their own if they had not been arrested.

If Congress decides to provide an even higher quality of health care to the illegal aliens, we must be certain that it provides funding for it and doesn't take the money out of enforcement programs or doesn't reduce the numbers of detentions to pay for it.

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As usual Roy hits the nail on the head.

BTW, I like the redesign of Numbers' website.

I'm still confused: these detention centers detain illegal aliens AND permanent legal residents who are accused of committing some crime that could lead to their deportation. Or am I wrong? The latter is entitled to due process and equal protection; the former is not. I can't even understand why someone with a green card who's accused, can spend 37 days in detention. Something's fishy. And I'll bet the fact that many of these detention centers are privately operated has a lot to do with it.

Originally Posted by AmyCarter

I'm still confused: these detention centers detain illegal aliens AND permanent legal residents who are accused of committing some crime that could lead to their deportation. Or am I wrong? The latter is entitled to due process and equal protection; the former is not. I can't even understand why someone with a green card who's accused, can spend 37 days in detention. Something's fishy. And I'll bet the fact that many of these detention centers are privately operated has a lot to do with it.

They are both protected under the constitution, they are both entitled to due process.....illegals though who have been deported before have already had their due process, and can be given jail time, fine and deportation as it is a felony to re-enter the country after being deported the first time.

Permanent residents (green card or visa holders) who commit a crime, if found guilty are subject to deportation...they are held in detention centers until they can go before a Judge....which due to the stress on the courts this can take some time....the detention centers are used as there is not enough room in the jails.

If I am wrong on any of these points anyone, please feel free to correct me, it is a good lesson for all of us to understand, as the opposition (pro illegals, OBL"S) likes to paint things other than the way they truely are.

The detainees should just shut their mouths. They are getting diagnosed and treated for illnesses that they had before they even entered our country illegally. These demands at the taxpayer's expense from the OBL's is getting old.