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
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.
Exclusive: Nearly 1,000 pages of internal CBP documents shared with @theintercept reveal US gov's militaristic, multi-agency, multi-national efforts to seal off the border from peaceful asylum seekers.
Following Trump's 2019 SOTU fear-mongering of caravans, CBP cracked down around the cities of Eagle Pass and Piedras Negras, bringing in the military, national guard, Texas DPS, local police, establishing a no-fly zone and closely surveilling migrants, activists, and attorneys.
Under pressure from and in collaboration with US, Mexican authorities, including police notorious for murder/kidnapping of migrants, "tricked" asylum seekers into confinement in a former bodybag factory.
CBP internally referred to the asylum seekers as "detainees" and "bodies."
Since the announcement, people have been transferred INTO Irwin, and Marshals Service may continue operating with LaSalle Corrections, the for-profit prison company.
More complicated still, Biden signed an executive order in January to eliminate the use of private prisons. The EO doesn't mention immigration detention, but Marshals should be beholden to that order.
Last week, the Marshals resigned a contract in Ohio with a for-profit co.
A US military advisor was present in December of 1981 as Salvadoran soldiers carried out the El Mozote massacre, slaughtering almost a thousand civilians.
For decades, the US government tried to cover-up the US role in the worst massacre of a long, bloody war that killed over 70k and displaced at least a half a million people.
A pre-trial hearing this week included the bombshell revelation of integral US involvement at El Mozote.
As the number of children crossing the US-Mexico border increases, I take a look at the private security companies maneuvering to cash in on child detention.
Two of the companies, Caliburn and Serco, have troubling histories with immigration detention, and have been accused of multiple counts of sexual abuse and fraud.
Another company, PAE, specializes in biometric data gathering.
All three stand poised for enormous profits.
The security companies are angling for different pieces of running Homestead, a child detention center, or "influx center" in Florida, which was shut down in 2019 after holding thousands of kids, charging up to $2million dollars a day, and facing withering criticism.
So, @USBPChief Rodney Scott signed a potentially illegal administrative subpoena as part of a Border Patrol effort to destroy evidence and obstruct a homicide investigation after BP agents helped beat a man to death.
new revelations in the case come in a petition to the @IACHumanRights in their first-ever hearing of an extra-judicial killing carried out by US officials.