Durbin Launches Inquiry Into Medical And Mental Health Care In ICE Detention Facilities

CHICAGO – U.S. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, today launched an inquiry into medical and mental health care for people in custody in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities, requesting information from ICE as well as requesting an audit of ICE’s mental health care services by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The inquiry follows a June report from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Physicians for Human Rights, and American Oversight that found that 95 percent of documented deaths in ICE custody between 2017-2021 were likely preventable.

In a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and ICE Deputy Director Patrick Lechleitner, Durbin highlights the failures of ICE to ensure adequate oversight and accountability. He writes, “ICE failed to ensure adequate oversight and accountability where dangerous conditions have led to deaths of detained people. ICE’s post-death investigations reportedly allowed the destruction of evidence, including deletion or overwriting of critical video evidence. ICE allegedly released key detained eyewitnesses from custody hours before—or even during—investigator facility visits. Most importantly, the study found that ICE’s oversight process failed to result in meaningful consequences for detention facilities. Detention facilities were not required to take immediate corrective actions to keep their contracts, and did not lose detention contracts or fail ICE inspections, even where ICE’s own death investigations found multiple violations of detention standards.”

Durbin then issues a series of recommendations to ICE. He writes, “The agency should issue a directive focused on vulnerable populations that ensures the release from detention of people with certain medical and mental health vulnerabilities. Such a directive should ensure rapid medical screening of detained immigrants to identify those who would face increased medical and/or mental health risk in detention and outline procedures to enable their prompt release from custody.

Durbin continues, “ICE must also ensure meaningful consequences for detention facilities where the failure to provide adequate medical and mental health care have caused the deaths of detained people, and must ensure full, comprehensive, and unbiased investigation of deaths in detention. These consequences include halting new intakes at any facility following a death until a thorough investigation into the factors that led to the death is completed; and examining methods for ending ICE detention contracts where the death resulted from substandard medical and mental health care. ICE also must ensure complete preservation of all relevant evidence, conduct interviews of detained eyewitnesses with protection from retaliation and deportation, and provide unimpeded access to staff and contractors.”

Durbin concludes with a request for written response to a series of questions by August 6, 2024.

Full text of the letter to Secretary Mayorkas and Deputy Director Lechleitner is available here.

In a letter to Comptroller General Gene Dodaro, Durbin asks GAO to “comprehensively and expeditiously review mental health care provided by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to noncitizens in its custody across all immigration detention facilities.”

Citing reports from the DHS Office of the Inspector General that few detention facilities offer in-person mental health services and inadequate access when they do, Durbin underscores that “ICE’s deficiencies in mental health care and staffing levels have real and lasting consequences. The failure to adequately meet individuals’ mental health needs has contributed to the pervasive and harmful use of solitary confinement in ICE facilities, as well as suicides, suicide attempts, and other instances of self-harm.”

Durbin concludes with specific questions for the requested GAO study to examine.

Full text of the letter to the Comptroller General Dodaro is available here.

Durbin continues to investigate access to counsel, medical neglect, and solitary confinement in ICE detention facilities. In April, Durbin introduced the Restricting Solitary Confinement in Immigration Detention Act, which would limit the use of solitary confinement by ICE. That same month, Durbin held a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on eliminating the abuse of solitary confinement. Durbin and a group of Senate Democrats also urged Department of Homeland Security Secretary (DHS) Alejandro Mayorkas and ICE Acting Director Patrick Lechleitner to phase out the use of solitary confinement in immigration detention. 

Last year, Durbin pressed for further investigation into deficient medical care in detention facilities after whistleblower reports alleged systemic failures by DHS to ensure proper oversight of its medical care contractor.

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