DEATH BY ICE
Categories: Essays
Written By: Billy Sinclair
He was a 60-year-old Cuban named Luis Dubegal-Paez. He was an illegal immigrant housed in the Rolling Plains Detention Center near Abilene. He had been making “sick call” regularly since January 2008 while in the custody of the U.S. Immigration and Enforcement Service (“ICE”), complaining about intolerable pain in his chest. Nurses, not doctors, gave him cough medicine and Tylenol for the chest pains. Two months after Dubegal-Paez complained about the chest pains and received no medical assistance ICE inspectors toured the facility in which the detainee was housed to see if it met ICE’s “detention standards.” The inspectors found the medical assistance provided to the detainees was “acceptable,” despite the fact that the facility had only eight vocational nurses with limited nursing or doctor supervision—according to the Houston Chronicle (Feb. 5, 2010).
Several weeks after the ICE inspection, Dubegal-Paez collapsed and died of a heart attack in March 2008. The Chronicle reported: “The [Dubegal-Paez] case highlights what critics have called pervasive problems with ICE’s enforcement of detention standards.”
The Chronicle obtained through the Freedom of Information Act more than 800 pages of inspection reports which revealed ICE inspectors had given “positive reviews” to some of its detention facilities with “serious problems,” including “inadequate medical care.” After Dubegal-Paez’s death, ICE inspectors found the facility, which they had previously deemed “acceptable,” lacking in providing medical care to chronically ill detainees and responding to sick call requests.”
No one was held accountable for Dubegal-Paez’s death. He was just another immigrant who shouldn’t have entered the country illegally. He had no real “constitutional” right to medical care to begin with. Some would even say he got what he deserved. Some would say, especially those who have no bond with justice.
In the same Chronicle newspaper a one-paragraph report from Rochester, New York told about a mentally ill man who was exonerated by DNA evidence after spending six years in prison for a rape he didn’t commit. The police got Freddie Peacock, now 60, to confess to raping a 24-year-old woman in 1976. He served six years on a 20-year sentence before being paroled in 1982. Peacock contacted the New York-based Innocence Project in 2002 who obtained a DNA analysis of evidence found in the victim’s underwear and from Peacock in 2008. Monroe County prosecutors agreed the DNA evidence established Peacock had not committed the rape.
No one was held accountable for Peacock’s wrongful conviction. He was just another “mentally ill” suspect the police could easily manipulate into confessing in order to “clear the books” of another violent crime. Just another mentally ill person, some would say, especially those who have no bond with justice.
There have now been so many Luis Dubegal-Paez’s and Freddie Peacocks in the American justice system that the injustices they represent no longer merit much social concern. The nation’s news media are more interested in what 600 Tea Party conventioneers are doing in Nashville this week than injustice in the American justice machine-dumb asses who talk about a “constitution” they’ve never read, much less possess a legal ability to understand its historical significance .
During my 40 years in the Louisiana prison system, I saw numerous inmates murdered by their keepers and scores of others killed through official abuse and neglect. In my book, these cage keepers are as guilty of “capital” murder as any of the more than 3000 inmates currently caged on this nation’s death rows. The “tea baggers” would find this blasphemous!
I am not on a soap box preaching for “justice.” It’s an illusive concept, not subject to precise definition or one that possesses mass social appeal. I am just making some casual observations about callous justice system and those responsible for making it work right—both of whom have failed, miserably.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/special/immigration/6852074.html
