House report: Medical neglect, falsified records harmed detained immigrants

In addition to obtaining thousands of pages of internal staff complaints, assessments and whistleblower accounts, congressional staff conducted on-site inspections at 20 facilities in Arizona, California, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas. 

The report cites, for instance, falsification of records involving Jean Carlos Jimenez-Joseph, a 27-year-old Panamanian migrant who committed suicide in May 2017 at ICE’s Stewart Detention Center in Georgia after reporting hallucinations and suicidal thoughts. 

Jimenez-Joseph was a recipient of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, an Obama-era program that allows undocumented immigrants who came to the country as children the ability to live and work in the United States. He was detained 69 days at the Georgia facility, which is run by private prison company CoreCivic, after being arrested for a misdemeanor in 2017.  

“In addition to leaving the unit unsupervised on seven occasions the night of Jimenez's suicide, Officer [Redacted] falsely logged that he completed security rounds at 12:00 a.m. and 12:28 a.m., neither of which were corroborated by video surveillance footage,” according to an internal ICE review cited in the report.  

The House Oversight reports also cites a review by Homeland Security's Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties of the Adelanto detention center, a California facility run by the company GEO Group. That review reported that a “failure to hire an effective and qualified clinical leader contributed to the inadequate detainee medical care that resulted in medical injuries, including bone deformities and detainee deaths.”