Emergency crews have been called to Dilley’s South Texas Family Residential Center at least 11 times since September for children in medical distress, a new NBC News report reveals.
EMS call logs and 911 audio obtained by NBC paint a dire picture inside the facility that detains over 1,400 people, including hundreds of children.
One caller said a child between 5 and 7 years old experienced three seizures in one day. Another alerted emergency responders about 13-year-old with a potential leg fracture. Another call reported a child was “desatting,” or experiencing a drop in blood oxygen saturation to 80% — well below the 90% threshold.
Other calls sought aid for children who were unable to breathe, burning up with fever or who seeming lethargic, according to call records obtained by NBC.
Most were taken to a nearby community hospital in Dilley, NBC reports. However, some with more serious conditions were rushed to a specialized pediatric hospital in San Antonio equipped to treat life-threatening conditions.
One 22-month-old’s condition was so bad that first responders wanted to fly him in a helicopter to San Antonio, which is about an hour’s drive away from the remote facility, according to the call analysis. However, weather conditions didn’t permit it.
“There is absolutely, unequivocally no appropriate way to detain a child, period,” Dr. Lara Jones, a pediatric critical care physician, told NBC. “It is causing physical, mental, measurable, studied harm. And there is no context in which that’s justified.”
On Thursday, Jones joined a group of other physicians in a joint letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem urging the immediate end to child detention.
“We are writing to you with an urgent request based on the decades of our collective medical experience – that the children currently held in immigration detention facilities be immediately released,” the letter stated. “The detention of children in these facilities is causing predictable, severe, and lasting harm to their mental and physical health.”
Studies show that detention is associated with serious health consequences for children. These include physical impacts including malnutrition, Vitamin D deficiencies and somatic complaints. They also include behavioral and mental health issues including suicidal ideation, anxiety and trauma.
“This is why the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the nation’s leading authority on child health, has repeatedly and unequivocally opposed the detention of children for immigration purposes; in fact, the AAP’s leadership recently reiterated that ‘[a]ll children held in immigration detention should be immediately released, and these facilities should be permanently shuttered” the letter added.
The recent measles outbreak at the Dilley facility further “underscores the immediate preventable danger children face in these settings” the physicians argue in the open letter.
Other than inadequate bedding, hygiene, clothing and access to food and clean drinking water, the letter cites the “limited access to timely, appropriate medical care” among its gravest concerns.
In the Current’s prior coverage of 911 calls coming from inside the nearby South Texas ICE Processing Center for adults in Pearsall, immigrant advocates said facility operators sometimes put off providing medical care until a person’s condition worsens enough to justify being rushed to a hospital. Thus, the community pays for it rather than CoreCivic, who owns Dilley, or Geo Group, who owns the Pearsall facility, the advocates argue.
“You always have to remember that these are for-profit detention facilities,” immigration attorney Jonathan Ryan, a former RAICES CEO, told the Current. “These are corporations that are profit-based, and medical care is expensive. And so even if they have the facilities to provide medical care, if they are able to offload those services to the local community, they’re going to do that because that’s more money in their pockets.”
In a statement to NBC News, Ryan Gustin, a spokesperson for CoreCivic, which operates Dilley under a federal contract, said no child “has been denied medical treatment or experienced a delayed medical assessment.” Staff are trained to call 911 when a child’s condition exceeds what can be managed on-site, Gustin added — not because of inadequate care, but out of “an abundance of clinical precaution.”
However, U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, said medical facilities on premises seem to be infrequently staffed. When 2-month-old Juan Nícolas was choking on his own vomit, there was no medical staff on hand to treat him, according to the congressman.
Castro also stated that during his visits in the middle of the day, he didn’t see anyone manning Dilley’s medical center.
Meanwhile, self harm and suicidal ideation appears to be endemic at both Dilley and Pearsall, according to news reports.
Wired reported that from January through May of last year, more than 80 emergency calls originated from Pearsall, including several about suicide attempts. One 36-year-old man reportedly swallowed 20 over-the-counter pills, while another detainee, 37, ingested cleaning chemicals and a third, 41, was found cutting himself.
But as the data bears out, self-harm and suicidal ideation isn’t reserved just for adults.
An aide to Jasmine Crockett told The Bulwark of a 13-year-old at Dilley named Valery, who attempted self harm with a knife from the cafeteria. Attorney Eric Lee told the Current that his 9-year-old client said she “didn’t want to be alive anymore.”
In response to what it calls “mainstream media lies” ICE released a statement “debunking” claims of mistreatment in Dilley, claiming that “in most cases, this is the best healthcare illegal aliens have received in their entire lives.”
Sign Up for SA Current newsletters.
Follow us: Apple News | Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | Or sign up for our RSS Feed
