The upshot of last Friday’s Brooklyn Law School conference on healthcare in immigration detention: Things have been bad, egregiously so—mysterious detainee deaths, vanishing detainees, detainees left with permanent damage, both physical and mental—but things will get better.
What else could anyone hope for?
The keynote speaker was the New York Times’ Nina Bernstein, who more than any other journalist in America has exposed the horrors of immigration detention. She talked about the “dark places” that are this country’s detention centers, “increasingly run by high-priced private contractors,” and the “government’s disturbing silence” when something grave or curious happens to its detainees.
But it was another speaker, Dr. Allen Keller, the Director of the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture, who questioned the fundamental construct: “Why are we detaining so many individuals?…And why are the numbers dramatically increasing?…And are we a better society as a result of doing this?”
The fact is, over 300,000 immigrants a year are detained by United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (USICE), and if we keep detaining this many people,” Kelly said, we “need to do it compassionately, humanely.” Which, he said, should include, improved access to healthcare, healthcare that has enforceable standards, and healthcare regulated by law.
Phyllis Coven, the Acting Director of the Office of Detention Policy and Planning, assured such a “culture change” of humanity under the Obama Administration: that on “all aspects of immigration reform, we’re marching forward” with a “more robust responsibility.”
Said Ms. Coven: “We’re developing a system (of immigration detention) that’s more humane and less penal.”
Let’s hope so, because it’s about time.
