Doctors say that agents arriving with immigrants are typically kind and respectful. But one exception galvanized physicians in Texas last year. A cancer patient was admitted to a public hospital accompanied by two guards from the GEO Group, the private contractor for the immigration detention facility where he was being held. Doctors came to believe that guards were texting parts of their conversations with the patient to someone outside the hospital.
The patient told his doctors that he feared speaking in the earshot of the guards, who, unlike local police officers, refused to step outside during examinations. As the man lay shackled to his hospital bed by both wrists and ankles and at his waist, the skin on his back began to ulcerate. Doctors said they felt intimidated and powerless.
“His treatment by the guards limited and challenged the ethical care of a patient by the physicians,” Dr. Judy Levison said at a board meeting for the Harris Health System, which operates the Texas hospital where he was treated.
The GEO Group did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Harris Health’s communications director, Bryan McLeod, said that a task force was reviewing the care of patients in law enforcement custody. Harris Health’s policy, like Banner’s, applies to both immigration detainees and prisoners.
Another Texas physician, Dr. Amelia Averyt, testified before the Texas Legislature about one of her patients — not a recent migrant, but an immigrant already living in Texas — who was so fearful of encountering immigration officials at a hospital that he delayed care for a stroke, missing the chance to receive medicine that could have prevented permanent brain damage.
Fears of immigration raids in medical institutions have led some immigrant advocates to organize training sessions, including one in Chicago that stresses disclosing patient information to immigration authorities only when required by a court order or warrant, and informing patients of their right to remain silent. Providers are encouraged not to record immigration statuses in medical records.
For migrants already in Border Patrol custody, medical providers are particularly concerned about minors. A medical student, Claire Lamneck, said she had seen an armed agent watching a teenage mother breast-feed her baby at Diamond Children’s Medical Center in Tucson. “The agent was sitting across from her, just staring at her chest,” Ms. Lamneck said. He refused to leave the room until a physician persuaded him.
from Best News Viral http://bit.ly/2ZhwnNA
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