Along with @jlosc9 I spoke with a nurse whistleblower at a Georgia detention center, who described a host of extremely worrying abuses.
One symptomatic detainee, requesting a Covid test, was denied and told “Get your ass back in that room.”
interc.pt/35y6Hmf
@theintercept
The list of serious medical abuses is long, but some of the most troubling include:
-staff encouraged to downplay covid concerns
-staff not told that detainees they were interacting with had tested positive for covid.
-staff encouraged to work even when they were symptomatic
-staff ignoring symptomatic detainees
-refusing tests
-underreporting cases
-fabricating vital signs
-shredding sick call requests
One person detained there told us being isolated when they were tested was “complete torture, because it’s like a punishment."
“I didn’t want to say I had a pain in my throat, or that I had symptoms, because I didn’t want to go back to the punishment cell.”
Conditions in this and other detention centers are NOT SAFE, especially during a pandemic.
Even the medical area was dirty, the whistleblower told us.
“There was often blood on the floor that had not been cleaned up."
The CEO of LaSalle, the private corporation making millions by detaining thousands of people, claimed they were being “diligent in operating our facilities at the highest level.”
According to whistleblower, a veteran medical staff member died of covid contracted at the facility.
ICE has the legal capacity to let all of these people go, to close the detention center or, AT LEAST, to release the most medically vulnerable.
Instead, we are beginning to realize the extent of the "silent pandemic" raging behind the prison bars.
@GovAcctProj and @ProjectSouth both working to protect the whistleblower from further retaliation.
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