After three weeks of this, Hector remembers, a psychiatrist saw Chido. Within two minutes, the doctor declared him schizophrenic.
Immigrant detainees in need of medical care probably won't get it right away in federal holding facilities, Hector says: "When you file a request, you have a notion that you're probably going to wait a week and a half" to see a doctor.
Gregory Pratt
Immigrant prisoners at the Pinal County Jail see family visitors only on dingy computer screens.
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Hector remembers an incident in which a man scraped his knee during outdoor recreation, asked for Neosporin, didn't receive it, and eventually developed a major staph infection.
Another instance he remembers involved a diabetic who was given the wrong dosage of insulin. He says when the man told the nurse the dosage was off, he was told to take it or leave it.
Watchdog groups also have been critical of the time it takes detainees to receive medical care.
After visits last year, the Women's Refugee Commission identified medical-care problems at the Central Arizona Detention Center and at the Eloy Detention Center in a report titled "Women and Children at Risk: Detention in Arizona."
The commission reported seeing a woman "visibly swollen all over." She had seen a doctor only once and had received no medication.
At Eloy, a woman with multiple sclerosis was denied medication until a neurologist could see her, the commission says. It took a month for her medical files to arrive at the facility, and after two months, the government had yet to schedule a consultation.
In its new report, the ACLU also chronicles serious medical delays. In one case, Helen, who was held at Eloy, reported vaginal bleeding. The report says her problem was shrugged off by the clinic as an extended menstrual cycle, and a month later, she underwent an emergency hysterectomy.
Grievances filed by immigrant detainees are scoffed at by ICE and its detention officers, the ACLU contends.
ICE rules allow immigrants held in federal custody to file complaints over conditions where they are imprisoned.
But the ACLU says very few grievances are acted upon in favor of detainees.
In its new report on conditions in Arizona immigrant-detention facilities, the ACLU analyzed almost 500 grievances filed at Florence Detention and Eloy to determine how many were approved or denied.
At Florence Detention, for example, two were approved over four years, while 64 were denied.
At Eloy, 44 were approved and 268 were denied.
"I don't think detainees are filing frivolous grievances," ACLU attorney Victoria Lopez says.
The report claims that detainees' grievances are ignored routinely by ICE and that detainees are threatened by guards if they file grievances:
"Several detainees in each of the Arizona facilities indicated that detention officers commonly threaten [them] with transfer to [the harsher Pinal County Jail] if they file grievances, complain, or make requests that are deemed unreasonable by guards."
To illustrate its point that ICE and jail officials do not take complaints seriously, the ACLU cites an incident with a transgender detainee named Tanya.
A Mexican who was incarcerated at Eloy from May to December 2009, Tanya filed a complaint against detention-center staff that got her thrown into an isolation cell for 10 days.
Recalling the incident that sparked the complaint to New Times, Tanya says a female supervisor took her into an office, told her to "take off your shirt, bitch," and grabbed her chest.
When she complained, the ACLU says in its report, she was sent to isolation.
At a different point in her incarceration, Tanya was housed with a detainee who groped her in her sleep and harassed her for oral sex, she claims. When she complained to a guard, she says, she was once again sent to isolation.
The ACLU also claims that so-called protective custody is used to punish detainees it is supposed to protect.
The organization's report recounts an incident in which a male detainee was raped in a bathroom by another detainee and the victim was placed in isolation. The ACLU says the incident was reported to the Pinal County Attorney's Office, which declined to prosecute. The detainee victim was shackled in isolation, supposedly for his own benefit, and ICE would not remove his chains even for meetings with his attorney, the ACLU says.
For ICE, watchdog groups' complaints about grievances are sources of irritation.
About them, ICE spokesman Vincent Picard states, "Grievances are regularly filed at all of our facilities, and when substantiated are appropriately resolved. Every detainee is issued a handbook that explicitly details their right to file a grievance and the process in place to do so."
New Times asked ICE whether guards ever threaten detainees with transfer to the Pinal County Jail for filing grievances. Officials refused to respond specifically, saying only that all complaints are investigated to the fullest.
ICE officials say the ACLU is dead wrong when it says grievances are difficult to file and often get ignored when they are filed.
"It's all in the handbook," Picard says. "Some of the stuff that frustrates us is when we have activist groups or attorneys who just deny reality and say, 'There's no way for them to file a grievance. There's no grievance process.' It's clearly outlined in the detainee handbook."
