By Arline T. Geronimus On May 12, 2008, 900 ICE agents, armed with military-grade weapons and backed up by a Black Hawk helicopter, descended on the rural community of Postville, Iowa. They raided the Agriprocessors meatpacking plant and detained 389 workers, almost all of whom were Latino. Nine years later, Postville remains one of the most notorious immigration law enforcement actions in the nation’s recent history. While its legal implications have been well canvassed, the public health consequences of mass immigration policing actions like this have remained largely [...]
GAO Report Reveals Troubling Inconsistencies and Issues Regarding Immigration Detention Medical Care
By: Thamys Gaertner BACKGROUND The United States Government Office Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report in February 2016 analyzing the disturbing costs and problems of the current on-site and off-site medical care in immigration detention facilities across the United States. U.S. Gov’t Accountability Office, GAO-16-231, Immigration Detention: Additional Actions Needed to Strengthen Management and Oversight of Detainee Medical Care (2016). During 2015, ICE held about 28,000 detainees per day in over 165 facilities. Id. at 6. In line with what has previously been reported on [...]
Immigration and Public Health
By Polly J. Price As we have seen with the recent Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the overall health of a population is a key component in the emergence and spread of contagious disease. But sovereign boundaries and distinctions between citizens and non-citizens undermine public health in the United States. State and local public health departments serve as the primary defense against the spread of contagious disease. But these public health agencies—already under-resourced because public funding is politically tenuous—must work within a system in which citizens and non-citizens are [...]