IIn his three months locked up at the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, in Georgia, Rodney Taylor missed meals and showers, lived with growing pain in his hips, developed a swollen thumbs up on his right hand and blisters on the stumps where his two legs were amputated when he was a toddler.
Taylor’s mother brought him to the United States of Liberia with a medical visa like a small child. He has undergone 16 operations and is a double amputee. He has two fingers on his right hand. Now 46 years old, he has lived in the United States almost all his life, works as a hairdresser, is active in promoting cancer awareness in his community and recently got engaged.
Nevertheless, his immigration status is not resolved, and despite a request for residence – commonly known as “green card” – pending, the ice agents of January 15 arrived at his house in Loganville, Georgia and took him to Stewart.
The reason, according to his lawyer, who shared documents from his case with The Guardian: a conviction for burglary which he received in adolescence and to which the state of Georgia forgave him in 2010.
Its case is part of an incalculable number of disabled people and other serious health problems which are swept away in the “mass deportation” efforts of the current administration. These efforts are made in extreme overcrowding in more and more detention centers like Stewart across the country.
They also occur without the benefit of two federal offices which previously offered monitoring of health care and other problems, and now a situation is taking place where disabled prisoners like Taylor are increasingly threatened with life and even death results, according to experts.
“This is the perfect storm for abuse – including negligence,” said Joseph Nwadiuko, professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania who is researching the immigration detention system. “Deaths are much more likely … (and) we have not thought of the implications of health care of what is developing,” he said.
The immigration detention system was already a precarious and potentially dangerous place for disabled prisoners, according to experts and a handful of current and former employees of the Department of Internal Security – the ICE parental agency.
But when the current administration has closed the Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL) and the Ombudsman of the Office of Immigration Detention (OIDO), prisoners such as Taylor found themselves with less protection than ever – at a time when nearly 48,000 detainees are locked up, the highest number since October 2019.
“Everything happens in the dark,” said Sarah Owings, Taylor’s lawyer, speaking of conditions that she faces her client and others like him.
Taylor spoke to The Guardian of Stewart. When he was detained in front of his house, it was only a few days to pick up new prosthetic legs; Those he used were too tight. Then the detention center gave him shoes that did not correspond to the legs and trying to walk “felt me as walking on concrete on my knees,” he said.
In addition, the prosthetic legs have batteries that require eight hours of load per day. But after being locked up in Stewart, he did not even see a doctor for three days, and in the months that followed, the establishment could never organize eight hours of load, allowing only several hours at a time. The result: the batteries die and the legs do not lean, creating more pain in the hips of Taylor.
Taylor and Owings sought a medical leave, to see the doctor who could at least install it for the new Prothetical legs – and were refused. A second petition is “under examination,” he said.
In the meantime, walking to the cafeteria to eat turned out to be too painful. Other detainees brought him meals for a while, but often had to chat with the guards for permission. A case manager has resumed the chore, often arriving at least an hour after meals.
The staff also offered Taylor a wheelchair – but he cannot push him, because his right hand has only two fingers, and his thumb has been swollen and has become painful since his detention.
The case of Taylor was one of the many in a history of CNN on people faced with a possible deportation after decades of life in the United States. Subsequently, he said, “The director came to see me and said to me,” Tell me what you need “.” He told her about her legs and thumbs. “I haven’t heard an answer yet,” said Taylor. “It’s stressful.”
Taylor told the Guardian that he was not the only detainee in Stewart with medical problems. He met another detainee who underwent an infection and could not walk; The man had to wait for about a month to get crutches.
“Unless you die or bleed … they will not come,” he said, a goalkeeper told him and several others. “They think:” Everyone is soon expelled … and resolving your problem is not our concern – getting you out of our concern here. Why spend all this additional money? “Said Taylor.
The situation is the same in other ice detention establishments, the Guardian de la Ice. They mentioned Krome, in Miami, Florida, where at least three detainees have died in recent months and other people with conditions such as HIV have spent weeks without medication.
Amy Zeidan, professor of emergency medicine at Atlanta University of Atlanta who has research on health care in the immigration detention system, said that the increase in overcrowding also aggravates a shortage of chronic labor. “They don’t have enough qualified people,” she said. “They don’t have the people they need to provide appropriate care.”
These conditions “are emblematic of the system” under the current administration, said DHS staff who preferred anonymity to avoid reprisals.
Michelle Brane was the Oido ombudsman until the office of more than 100 employees is closed, which removes inspections from immigration detention facilities – both announced and unannounced; responses to complaints; And political recommendations to improve these aspects of detention such as health care. Her office “has defused situations that are now exacerbated (by) … growing detentions,” she said.
The DHS sees things differently.
“These offices have hampered the application of immigration by adding bureaucratic obstacles and undergoing the mission (of the ministry),” said a spokesperson for the DHS, Tricia McLaughlin, in March, concerning the closing the OIDO and the CRCL, which managed more in-depth in-depth and other problems. Ice did not answer a question from the Guardian.
This attitude, said Brane, shows a “disdain to fulfill the basic human conditions”, adding that his office was “created by Statute and funded by the Congress”.
The former mediator is concerned about the situation faced with disabled prisoners and other serious health problems. “In the end, I fear that people would die or undergo irreparable damage-and death should not be the moment when we start to worry,” she said. “We should not be a country that willingly illustrate people.”
