The 2024 Homeland Security appropriations bill increased funding for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations to handle an anticipated daily detainee population of 41,500 , up from an average of 34,000 in recent years .
Yet recent studies have exposed cracks that call into question the agency's ability to medically care for the detainees it is entrusted with, including inhumane conditions , high suicide rates , structural problems such as the use of prisons to hold detainees, delayed or interrupted medical care and overcrowded conditions. Research also shows that the pandemic years further exacerbated these inequalities . One recent report by a trio of nonprofit advocacy groups blames preventable deaths of people detained by ICE on inadequate investigations and flawed systems at the agency.
The report, Deadly Failures , released on June 25, 2024, by the American Civil Liberties Union, American Oversight, and Physicians for Human Rights, documents inadequacies in diagnosis, treatment and emergency response . It points to suicides that might have been prevented with appropriate mental health care and properly managed medication. And it details underlying issues—understaffing and a lack of interpretation and translation services.
The Conversation asked Cara Buchanan, an emergency physician and clinical fellow in health policy and social emergency medicine at the Harvard Kennedy School, whose research the report cites, about research in this area by her team and othe.
