NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Federal inspections of the U.S. government’s only dedicated detention unit for transgender immigrants last year found hundreds of unanswered requests for medical attention, poor quarantine procedures and deficient treatment for mental illnesses and other chronic diseases, Reuters has learned.
Transgender migrant Shannel Cruz shops in Super Amanacer restaurant and store in Charlottesville, Virginia, U.S., May 13, 2019. REUTERS/Adria Malcolm
Details of the inspections of the transgender unit at the Cibola County Correctional Center in New Mexico, which have not been reported previously, were contained in internal reports from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) health corps and a U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) civil rights office.
The problems, which led to the transfer of all detainees to other facilities in January, were described to Reuters by congressional aides who were briefed on the documents and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The reports come to light as Democrats in Congress accuse ICE of not living up to the agency’s own standards for caring for detained transgender immigrants.
April Grant, an ICE spokeswoman, did not comment directly on the specifics outlined by the congressional aides but confirmed that a December 2019 report by the ICE health corps found “several health care-related deficiencies” at the center, such as failing to complete laboratory orders or arrange for HIV patients to see infectious disease specialists within 30 days of arrival.
Grant said many of those problems were addressed in December, for instance by speeding up backlogged lab orders and educating staff on detention standards and medication policies.
However, the concerns led to the transfer of all of the approximately two dozen detainees in the transgender unit, as well as other chronically ill detainees in the general population. About half were sent to a facility Aurora,