Border Patrol officials complained of ‘overuse of hospitalization’ as 8-year-old died

[Stevicus]

Border Patrol officials complained of 'overuse of hospitalization' as 8-year-old died

Border Patrol leadership complained about the 'overuse of hospitalization,' which investigators worried was costing 'valuable staff time.'

www.latimes.com

As an 8-year-old was dying in Border Patrol custody last month, officials at the Texas detention center where she had been held were complaining about the facility’s “overuse of hospitalization,” according to an internal report obtained by The Times.

Anadith Danay Reyes Álvarez, who suffered from sickle-cell disorder and a heart condition, had developed a 101.8 degree fever during the five days she was at the detention facility in Donna, Texas.

On May 14, two days before Department of Homeland Security investigators arrived to inspect conditions at Donna, Anadith tested positive for the flu and was transferred to a facility in Harlingen, Texas, that is designed to detain migrants with communicable diseases.

Anadith’s fever spiked to 104.9, and she was transferred May 17 to a hospital, where she died that day. A nurse at the Harlingen facility had denied Anadith’s mother’s initial requests for an ambulance or a hospital visit on the day the girl died, according to a DHS statement two weeks later.

After being transferred to another facility, they initially denied the mother's requests to take her to a hospital. They finally allowed her to be transferred to the hospital, where she died that day.

“Given her history of very significant medical issues, this patient should have been sent to a hospital once she developed fever and other symptoms,” Dr. Parveen Parmar, an emergency medicine physician and professor at USC’s Keck School of Medicine, wrote in an email to The Times. “It is hard to predict what might have happened, but certainly, she had a much higher chance of survival had she received this timely care.”

Border Patrol officials’ complaints about hospitalization procedures were contained in two memos produced by the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman and obtained by The Times. The relatively new oversight office is charged with reviewing conditions within Homeland Security’s vast detention system. The memos, meant for agency leadership, include details on conditions in many facilities along the southern border this spring.

The first report, dated May 15, details a spread of diarrhea among children and some overcrowding issues at a detention facility in Laredo. The second report, dated May 22, describes problems with medical care at the Donna facility.

CBP officials said that they are prioritizing processing families and “medically fragile” migrants and that families are spending less time in custody as a result of the review. United States Public Health Service clinicians have been deployed to border facilities to provide extra guidance and oversight, officials said.

“CBP will continue to review procedures, practices, and equipment in order to ensure that we are protecting those in our care,” a spokesperson said in a statement.

Border detention facilities are not prepared to handle the complex issues they face, Parmar said.

“These have become health systems without the resources to be health systems,” she said. “The system doesn’t have what they need to take care of complex patients … there should be a comprehensive review of cases, charts, and external oversight to determine what could strengthen the system.”

One thing they should do is to find them better living accommodations, rather than cramming them all into these overcrowded facilities. They're filled beyond capacity. But it seems that they also want to save money by not sending people to the hospital if they need it. They think they can be treated on site, at these facilities, which as the doctor quoted above said, makes them into "health systems without the resources to be health systems." It's a tragic mess.

 

[Revoltingest]

I've noticed that it's standard for cops to see civilians
who deviate from "normal" thru the lens of illegality.
Deaf people are treated as drunk & refusing to comply
with orders.
Autistic people are treated as disturbing the peace &
refusing to comply with orders.
Having a stroke or seizure is treated as being drunk
or drugged.
Paralyzed people are seen as drugged or non-compliant.

Unless someone has an obvious physical injury like
a major bleeding wound, they often dismiss any
claims or symptoms as unworthy of medical care.
This culture results from poor training, poor vetting
of applicants, & lack of accountability.