15 May 22
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14 May 22
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Unfortunately for Israel, however, Palestinian identity cannot be eradicated at the barrel of a gun.
As the Times reported, Israeli police officers had commenced “beating and kicking mourners” at the funeral procession in Jerusalem, thereby “forcing pallbearers to nearly drop the coffin”. This, at least, was mercifully straightforward information coming from the same news outlet that had just days before opted to use the noncommittal phrase “Dies at 51” in its announcement of Abu Akleh’s murder.
The US newspaper of record has also been known for such journalistic perversions as reducing the 2014 Israeli military slaughter of four Palestinian children playing football in the Gaza Strip to the following headline: “Boys Drawn to Gaza Beach, and Into Centre of Mideast Strife”. One might well have expected a May 13 summary from the Times along the lines of: “Coffin Nearly Falls at Journalist’s Funeral, In Regrettable Embodiment of Israeli-Palestinian Conflict”.
Over the course of her dedicated career, Abu Akleh herself embodied Palestinian humanity by speaking truth to power. Now, the occupying power has spoken back by shooting her in the head and attacking her mourners – a response that can only be classified as acute and multitiered state savagery, in keeping with Israel’s modus operandi of refusing to let Palestinians live, die, or be buried in peace.
There is also the matter of not allowing dead and buried Palestinians to remain dead and buried in peace, which is what happens when, for example, the Israeli military undertakes to bomb cemeteries in Gaza – as though it were somehow possible to retroactively obliterate Palestinian existence by blowing up bones.
To be sure, Israeli attacks on funerals are nothing new – which no one should really find surprising given Israel’s track record of attacking ambulances, hospitals, medical personnel, schools, United Nations compounds, apartment buildings, animals, trees, babies, and pretty much anything else that can be attacked.
Recall the July 29, 2021 assault by Israeli forces on the funeral of 12-year-old Mohammed al-Alami, who had been shot in the chest by Israeli soldiers the previous day as he travelled in a car with his father in the West Bank town of Beit Omar. Al-Alami’s funeral, in turn, led to another: that of 20-year-old Shawkat Awad from the same town, who was killed by Israeli fire while mourning al-Alami.
In another case illustrating Israel’s apparent fetish for funeral attacks, Israeli security forces were unleashed against the March 2, 2022 funeral for 19-year-old Palestinian student Ammar Abu Afifa, killed by an Israeli bullet in the Al-Aroub refugee camp north of Hebron. Even the Times of Israel, a fiercely Zionist outfit, felt compelled to run the headline: “Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian teen. The army hasn’t said what he did wrong”.
Fast forward two months to Abu Akleh’s funeral, and the violent footage of baton-wielding Israeli police has earned a rare denunciation from outgoing White House press secretary Jen Psaki, who described the scenes as “deeply disturbing”. Not that the United States does not engage in deeply disturbing behaviour on a regular basis, including vis-à-vis funerals.
Anyway, Israel and the US have long been two peas in a sadistic pod; Israeli malevolence simply has a more intense geographic focus. Incidentally, May 15 – a mere two days after Abu Akleh was buried in Jerusalem – marks the seventy-fourth anniversary of the Nakba, when Palestinians mourn the founding of the state of Israel on Palestinian land in 1948. This entailed the destruction of more than 500 Palestinian villages, the killing of more than 10,000 Palestinians, and the expulsion of at least three-quarters of a million more – the start of a bloody trajectory that continues to this day.
Unfortunately for Israel, however, Palestinian identity cannot be eradicated at the barrel of a gun; nor will Palestinians spontaneously forget their existence now that Israeli security forces have arrested mourners for carrying the Palestinian flag at Abu Akleh’s funeral. And as Israel drives the final nails into the coffin of its own projected image of humanity, the truth is that any pretensions to Israeli humaneness should have been buried a long time ago.
Russian servicemen oversee the boarding of a bus on May 6 for civilians who were evacuated from the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, Ukraine. (photo: Alessandro Guerra/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
They say they’re forced into ‘filtration camps’ to face strip searches and harsh questioning
At least 1 million Ukrainian civilians have fled the fighting into Russia, according to Russian Defense Ministry numbers that the Ukrainian government also accepts as valid. In many cases, especially in the devastated city of Mariupol, residents were effectively forced into Russia with no option to seek refuge on friendlier soil. In other cases, especially in the breakaway territories of eastern Ukraine, the travel to Russia was voluntary.
Almost everyone has had to pass through “filtration camps,” a perilous process in which Ukrainians are strip-searched and interrogated. People suspected of having sympathies to the Ukrainian military are being detained and tortured, according to refugees, representatives of volunteer organizations, and Ukrainian and U.S. officials.
“They are disappearing people who talk openly about pro-Ukrainian positions,” said Lyudmila Denisova, the Ukrainian parliament’s human rights ombudsman.
Not every story has ended badly. In some cases, Ukrainians who wanted to pass through Russia and go to another country were able to do so, even if they were staunchly pro-Kyiv. Some spoke appreciatively of help from local Russian humanitarian groups.
But many Ukrainians have been transferred to a constellation of temporary refugee settlements across Russia’s vast territory, leaving them trapped inside the country that had targeted them with hatred and leveled their homes.
At the camps, the questioning often continues, refugees said.
“‘Who are you for?’ they asked. ‘For Russia or for Ukraine?’” said Bohdan, a 26-year-old construction worker from Mariupol, who escaped the city with his wife and 7-year-old daughter in mid-March when buildings in their neighborhood began collapsing because of heavy fighting. He spoke on the condition that his family name not be published because he fears for his security.
He fled into Russian-held territory, the only place he could reach at the time. Eventually, he made his way to a refugee center in Yalta, in Crimea, on the site of an abandoned Soviet health resort that he said had not been renovated since then. He was repeatedly interrogated about his loyalties.
“I said, ‘You are interesting people. There was a war happening in my homeland, Russian soldiers attacked, and my house was smashed. And you want me to shout pro-Russian proclamations?’” he recalled telling them.
Russian officials also questioned him about the location of Ukrainian military positions inside Mariupol, he said.
He and his family went on to leave Russia in mid-April with the help of some foreign volunteer organizations, he said, and are now in Stockholm. The rest of his group of refugees was taken to a run-down health resort somewhere in a remote area of Russia, more than 600 miles inside the border, he said.
Repeated rounds of questioning
Alexander Shevchuk, 19, who studied information technology at a local college, had lived with his family on the eastern bank of the Kalmius River that bisects Mariupol, close to the headquarters of the pro-Kyiv Azov Regiment that has been a target of Russian firepower.
From the ninth floor of a nearby apartment building, he could witness the city’s methodical destruction by Russian artillery. “For the first time, I understood what apocalypse looked like,” he said. When he was caught in the crossfire inside a shuttered supermarket while hunting for food, a fragment of an artillery shell lodged in his back, he said. Many others around him were killed.
When soldiers from the breakaway Donetsk People’s Republic captured the area where Shevchuk’s family was hiding at the end of March, there was little choice but to try to make it to Russia. Even before he reached the border, he said, he endured repeated rounds of questioning by separatist soldiers, Russian border guards and agents of Russia’s FSB, the internal security agency; they all tried to establish whether he had taken part in fighting. He was strip-searched repeatedly and checked for pro-Ukrainian tattoos and the calluses and bruises that can be signs of having handled weaponry.
Shevchuk said he was questioned about his long hair and goatee, which soldiers and border agents believed was a sign of Ukrainian nationalism. Men who had military certificates that suggested they had actively served in the Ukrainian army were taken into custody, he said. One acquaintance of his was taken to another building, then beaten, tortured and robbed before he was released again.
“I was terribly afraid,” Shevchuk said. “I was scared they would say I was from Azov,” the pro-Kyiv battalion, he said.
Shevchuk and his family ultimately spent about a week at a “filtration camp” on the Ukrainian side of the border, awaiting a final round of questioning. The refugees were given questionnaires asking their attitudes about the Ukrainian military, the Ukrainian government and various elements of Ukrainian life. Shevchuk and the others wrote “negative,” since they figured that was the correct response. “We didn’t want any problems,” he said.
Interrogators also checked phones and tablets, looking at apps and photos to try to find any trace of military combat, and removed SIM cards from some of them because, they said, they could be used for targeting by the Ukrainian military.
If any of the Ukrainians slipped up and referred to what had happened as “war,” the interrogators would immediately become aggressive, Shevchuk said. “Why do you think this is war? War against whom?” he said they asked. “You know you shouldn’t say this word.”
The ordeal continues
Many refugees are careful about expressing their views openly on Russian soil, unsure about the loyalties of other displaced Ukrainians around them and of the Russians who are helping them.
“They will never say anything against Russia, because they don’t trust us,” said Laila Rogozina, head of the reception office at the Civic Assistance Committee, a Russian volunteer organization that helps refugees and has been harassed by the Kremlin.
The treatment of refugees inside Russia appears to vary widely. Much depends on luck. Some border guards prevent Ukrainians without the proper documents from leaving Russia. Others are laxer, according to Ukrainians who have made the passage.
“It’s like roulette. They can let you out or send you back” at the border, said Kirill Zhivoy, a coordinator at Volunteers in Tbilisi, a group in the capital of Georgia that is helping Ukrainians who manage to cross the border from Russia.
Some refugees are able to find decent short-term housing. Others have access only to guarded camps where refugees cannot come and go as they please.
Ukraine’s Western backers have expressed alarm.
“If women and children and elderly and other individuals are being displaced forcibly,” Michael Carpenter, the U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, told reporters last week, “that would be a war crime and it would just be appalling as a completely uncivilized endeavor.”
The Russian Foreign Ministry has said the reports of forcible displacement are “lies.”
“We are talking about checkpoints for civilians leaving the zone of active hostilities,” the Russian Embassy in Washington wrote in a Telegram post. “In order to avoid sabotage operations by Ukrainian national battalions, soldiers of the Russian armed forces thoroughly inspect vehicles heading to safe regions. We will detain all bandits and fascists. The Russian military does not create any obstacles for the civilian population, but helps them stay alive and provides them with food and medicines.”
Many Ukrainians arrive in Russia with little more than the clothes on their backs, leaving them few choices. Some lack money for bus tickets or understand the country’s labyrinthine bureaucracy. Others are unfamiliar with Russia’s vast geography, and do not appear to understand that promises of extra support and temporary housing in Russia’s eastern regions can take them thousands of miles away from Ukraine.
“Some people from Mariupol said they’d already decided to go to the Khabarovsk region” on Russia’s far eastern Pacific coast, a six-day train journey from Moscow, said Danil Makhnitsky, the head of a Moscow-based volunteer organization that is helping refugees with supplies and practical support. Some of the refugees don’t understand where they are going when they sign up, said Makhnitsky, whose group goes by the name “Society. Future.”
Trapped in Russia
If Ukrainians want assistance from the Russian government — often a necessity, since Ukrainian cash can’t be exchanged into Russian rubles — they often need to give up their passports to get it. Both temporary housing and asylum require turning over documents to the authorities. It can be difficult to get them back.
“They are taking Ukrainians hostage,” said Denisova, the Ukrainian human rights ombudsman.
Even Ukrainians who say that Russia was their preferred destination say they worry about the challenges of being a refugee there.
“The migration service said that if I want my passport back, I will need to write an official letter saying that I am refusing this temporary residence asylum certificate,” said Marina Tsymbalova, 33, a refugee from Mariupol who is in Moscow with two of her daughters and has applied for a one-year temporary asylum status in Russia that required her to hand over her Ukrainian documents.
“I want to go back at some point,” she said. “My mom is there, and my older daughter. I worry about them.”
Once Shevchuk and his family had reached the Russian side of the border, they spent about a week in temporary housing for refugees before buying bus tickets to neighboring Georgia. He said they had been able to move around freely and had wanted to leave as quickly as possible. It was oppressive to stay in a country where most people support the war and billboards everywhere are plastered with the letter Z, which has become a symbol of the invasion. Inside Russia, it was not possible to express his views openly, he said.
“We had a peaceful life. They took it away from me and left me with nothing,” he said. “All of a sudden they tell you you’re being saved. Saved from what? I’ve never seen fascists or Nazis.”
Antiabortion demonstrators hold a protest outside the Planned Parenthood Reproductive Health Services Center in St Louis, Missouri. (photo: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)
News coverage of the antiabortion movement tends to omit its history of violence. So we're here to remind you: the antiabortion right has a violent track record, from attacking clinics and patients to assassinating abortion providers.
A number of pieces have explored how conservatives got us to this moment and how abortion rights have divided US politics for half a century. Journalists and commentators have examined the judicial philosophy of antiabortion activists, the public’s opinion on reproductive rights, and how abortion became a hot-button topic at election time.
But one topic has largely been missing from mainstream coverage: the role of right-wing violence in the movement against reproductive freedom. Yes, antiabortion forces defeated Roe through dogged political campaigning. But they also used outright violence, including attacks on abortion clinics, doctors, and patients.
This isn’t exactly a secret. In 1991, the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology warned that there was an “epidemic of antiabortion violence in the United States.” From 1977 to 1988, the journal reported, there had been a hundred ten instances of arson, firebombing, or bombing of abortion clinics, and over the same stretch “the national rate of violence was 3.7 per 100 abortion providers and 7.2 per 100 nonhospital abortion providers.” One study a few years earlier, published in the American Journal of Political Science, found that antiabortion crime was concentrated in areas with a “greater acceptance of violence toward women.”
When filing their amicus brief in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the case that will likely overturn Roe, a group of feminists made sure to mention the antiabortion right’s violent track record:
Acts of anti-abortion violence during the period from 1977 to 2019 include at least 11 murders, 26 attempted murders and at least 756 threats of harm or death, 620 stalking incidents and four kidnappings. Crimes directed at clinic facilities have included at least 42 bombings, 189 arsons, 100 attempted bombings or arsons, and 662 bomb threats. The actual numbers are likely much higher.
Among these incidents were the 2009 assassination of George Tiller, a Wichita, Kansas doctor who performed late-term abortions, while he was at church and a 1997 abortion clinic bombing outside Atlanta that killed two and injured six. (The perpetrator of the latter, antiabortion extremist Eric Rudolph is currently serving a life sentence at the ADX Florence Supermax prison.)
Eleanor Bader, coauthor of Targets of Hatred: Anti-Abortion Terrorism, wrote in an email to Jacobin that antiabortion zealots have “stalked provider’s children with relentless messaging that their ‘parent kills babies,’ and shot at, and ultimately killed, more than 10 clinic staff people, including doctors and receptionists. This violence has not been directed to any other type of medical care and has led to increased antiabortion stigma. This relentless movement has fought against all gains made by women and has had tremendous success in its efforts to roll back feminist progress.” Since 2017, abortion rights advocates say they’ve seen a general rise in antiabortion violence.
While it’s commonly thought that these acts are the random outbursts of lone wolves, at least one study, focusing just on incidents of violence in Pensacola, Florida, found:
There is evidence that many of the militant anti-abortion groups have affiliations with the Ku Klux Klan, various militias and militant anti-taxation groups. One of these groups, the United States Taxpayers Party, is preparing a training facility to teach “militant” and “unmerciful” techniques. Two of its leaders, Jeffrey Baker and Howard Phillips, have publicly advocated the killing of abortion providers. Although the number of violent extremists is small, their impact has been disproportionately large.
In recent days, some commentators have correctly noted this violent strain of the antiabortion right. Writing in the Washington Post, Monica Hesse gave a nod to “abortionists who go to work in bulletproof vests in picketed buildings,” and USA Today outlined how abortion clinics are reassessing their safety measures in light of Roe’s imminent demise.
But for the most part, this major piece of post-Roe history has been rendered a footnote. That not only distorts the historical record, it whitewashes the antiabortion movement. Because those seeking to guarantee reproductive freedom by providing abortions haven’t just been harassed and defamed — they’ve been under the constant threat of violence.
"Why is ICE choosing to release people from custody who are on their deathbeds while they're hospitalized?" (image: Clay Rodery/LA Times)
But just over a month after she was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and booked into New Mexico’s Otero County Processing Center, her health was in free-fall. She was transferred to an El Paso hospital, where she died on June 1, 2019.
Medina Leon’s name wasn’t among the nine deaths recorded by ICE that year. She had been hurriedly released from custody while hospitalized, just before succumbing to the same failures in care she had worked to prevent for others.
The circumstances surrounding Medina Leon’s release and death were discovered among more than 16,000 pages of documents disclosed as part of an ongoing lawsuit brought by The Times against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security seeking records of abuse at immigration detention centers. The documents provide a rare look into one of several known instances in which detainees were discharged on the edge of death, underscoring long-standing complaints from advocates about uncounted deaths of people who have been in ICE custody.
Medina Leon’s case was investigated by the DHS Office of Inspector General, a watchdog agency with oversight of ICE that has recently come under fire from transparency advocates for how it handles investigations.
Emails reviewed by The Times show immigration officials moved with unusual speed to remove Medina Leon from custody. While it took six weeks and several visits with medical staff before she saw a doctor in detention, ICE expedited her release in less than six hours — relieving the agency of responsibility when she died four days later.
ICE’s field medical coordinator initiated the rapid-fire process on May 28, recommending Medina Leon’s release from Otero. The facility is operated by Management and Training Corp., a private prison company known as MTC.
“If this detainee were to become further seriously ill there is a potential for a poor outcome,” the official wrote, noting that Medina Leon was “so underweight.”
In an email the same day marked “high” importance, another ICE official replied that her “vitals do not look good.”
“Could we please get detainee property for full release ready ASAP,” a detention supervisor responded.
Within hours of her being admitted to the hospital, two ICE agents arrived at Medina Leon’s bed with parole paperwork for her to sign. One of the agents later told investigators that the process was being expedited though he “was not aware of the reasons for the rush.” He said he had never before served release documents at a hospital.
That night, a status update noted Medina Leon’s condition was “serious/critical.” A final email came 20 minutes later: “The detainee has been served with parole paperwork, and is no longer in ICE custody.”
ICE spokeswoman Paige Hughes declined to comment on Medina Leon’s case, but wrote in a statement that the agency “takes very seriously the health, safety, and welfare of those in our care, including those who come into ICE custody with prior medical conditions or who have never before received appropriate medical evaluation or care.”
MTC spokesman David Martinson also declined to comment on the case.
“We take the medical care of detainees very seriously,” he wrote in a statement, adding that “detainees have access to appropriate and necessary medical, dental, and mental health care, including emergency services.”
The swift processing of Medina Leon’s parole was highly unusual — such reprieves typically take several days or weeks. During the Trump administration, ICE more often released detainees on bond, which requires families to front thousands of dollars to help loved ones avoid remaining in detention for months as they await decisions on their immigration cases. Others were released under different discretionary orders of recognizance or supervision while their case was pending.
Advocates for detainees say Medina Leon’s death highlights a history of actions by ICE officials that allow the agency to avoid responsibility for sick or dying detainees. ICE has long been criticized for inadequate medical care provided by detention facilities, most of which are managed by for-profit companies like MTC.
After the first private prison contract was granted in 1983 for a Texas facility, the federal government’s immigrant detention network expanded until it peaked in 2019 with an average daily population of more than 55,000. So far this year, that figure is around 20,000. Nearly 80% of detainees are held in for-profit facilities, though the Biden administration has closed or scaled back several troubled facilities and has favored alternatives such as using ankle monitors to track those awaiting immigration court proceedings.
Despite detaining hundreds of thousands of people nationwide, ICE has said that fewer than a dozen detainees die in custody each year. Recorded deaths have remained low even during the pandemic. ICE reported a high of 21 deaths in 2020 and just five for all of 2021. No deaths have been recorded so far in 2022.
The agency began recording in-custody deaths in 2009 as part of reforms during the Obama administration. That same year, ICE officials admitted they had failed to disclose 10 additional deaths in a list of 90 that the agency delivered to Congress. In 2018, Congress required ICE to publicly release reports on every in-custody death within 90 days. But ICE has failed to comply since the mandate began, according to a September 2020 congressional oversight report.
The American Civil Liberties Union is suing ICE for access to records about deaths of detainees who were released from custody in their final days after experiencing medical emergencies. The lawsuit names four people — Medina Leon and three men who were released while they were hospitalized and had fallen into comas.
“Why is ICE choosing to release people from custody who are on their deathbeds while they’re hospitalized?” said Eunice Cho, an attorney at the ACLU. “The impact is, of course, that ICE is then exempt from reporting requirements, investigation requirements and financial requirements from the deaths that have taken place” as a result of inadequate healthcare.
‘We wanted to change the world’
For nearly a decade, Medina Leon volunteered for Alexia Sanchez’s advocacy organization, Gay Sin Fronteras, in El Salvador.
Sanchez said Medina Leon accompanied queer and transgender people to medical appointments and pharmacies. She talked people out of acting on thoughts of suicide. And she made hospital visits to ensure that doctors treated patients with HIV, which is heavily stigmatized in El Salvador. Advocates say more than 500 trans people have been killed there since 1995.
The friends saw each other regularly until Medina Leon stopped showing up at organizing efforts. Sanchez, who is also trans, fled months later and now lives in Los Angeles.
“We wanted to change the world,” Sanchez said. “Knowing what happened to Johana was a very tough blow.”
After presenting herself to border officials near El Paso and requesting asylum, Medina Leon was transferred on April 14, 2019, to the Otero County Processing Center. Like most immigrants detained by ICE, she had no criminal record.
Two days into her stay at Otero, Medina Leon made the first of at least five requests for medical attention, often complaining of stomach pain, vomiting and nausea. Homeland Security Department records reviewed by The Times show nurses prescribed antacids, attributing her condition to the facility’s “spicy food” and a prior history of gastrointestinal issues.
Medina Leon marked the top of each handwritten request “urgent.”
“I can’t keep down the food in any way because of my gastric issue and it gives me constant stomach pain,” she wrote on May 11. “I’ve lost 13 pounds and would like to know if I can be seen.”
By Memorial Day weekend — five weeks into her detention — Medina Leon had lost nearly 18% of her body weight, going from 126 to 103 pounds. Her final request, inquiring about a rash that had developed on her forehead, appeared more desperate: “Urgent please.”
A nurse flagged her case as “serious,” jotting down a growing list of symptoms that now included weakness, a sore throat, cough and acid reflux. She referred Medina Leon for a follow-up appointment with Otero’s on-call nurse practitioner, but he never saw her.
A wrongful-death lawsuit filed by Medina Leon’s family claims that another medical request she made the next day went unanswered. MTC policy requires medical staff to review requests within a day — or immediately in urgent situations. Staff then have another 24 hours to evaluate sick detainees in person.
In depositions, nurses who treated Medina Leon said that, at the time, Otero staff relied on a paper system to refer detainees’ medical requests to providers. Under that system, one staffer testified, it could take “a couple days” for a provider to respond to a referral.
A nurse practitioner who was supposed to treat Medina Leon on May 24 told inspector general investigators that he had not heard about her case. Two days later, when he called to check in on patients during his next scheduled shift, he was told “nothing exciting was awaiting.”
The nurse practitioner, who spent just a few days a week at Otero, also had a full-time job at a clinic and owned a restaurant, according to a deposition transcript. He admitted in his testimony that he never saw Medina Leon in person.
In a separate deposition, Otero’s warden acknowledged the nurse practitioner had violated MTC’s company policy by stamping his name on Medina Leon’s medical record without actually seeing her.
By the time Medina Leon saw a doctor on May 27, her skin had yellowed, her temperature was fluctuating and her heart struggled to pump blood. Unsure of what was causing her rapid decline, staff ordered tests for hepatitis, HIV and chickenpox.
The next morning, the wrongful-death lawsuit claims, Medina Leon was found unconscious in her cell. Inspector general records show she had been dizzy, threw up her breakfast and complained of chest pains.
Sanchez said Medina Leon had always radiated optimism, frequently telling friends, “Everything is possible.” But when her HIV test came back positive May 28, she grew distraught, covered her face and cried, a staffer told investigators.
Within hours, an ambulance was called to rush Medina Leon to Del Sol Medical Center in El Paso. Staff waited by her side with a defibrillator in case her heart gave out.
As word of Medina Leon’s plummet spread, ICE officials moved swiftly to process her parole.
A death certificate listed sepsis — a life-threatening condition that arises when the body struggles to fight an infection — as the primary cause of death, with pneumonia and HIV as underlying causes. A private autopsy ordered for the family’s lawsuit found a blood clot in Medina Leon’s lungs and a fungal infection that had spread to multiple organs.
An ICE statement at the time said her death was “another unfortunate example of an alien who enters the United States with an untreated, unscreened medical condition.”
But behind the scenes, officials at the inspector general’s office and ICE had begun an internal investigation that would lead to more questions than answers.
Medical staff involved in her care agreed more could have been done sooner, though they disagreed over who or what was at fault. The doctor who rushed Medina Leon to the hospital told investigators he thought someone should have phoned him earlier because he was on call 24 hours a day. Meanwhile, a nurse told investigators that company protocol allowed emergency calls only for patients in “acute distress.”
Accounts also differ as to Medina Leon’s awareness of her HIV status. One nurse told investigators Medina Leon said she might have HIV, mentioning that she was stuck by a dirty needle while working as a nurse in El Salvador a year earlier. But the doctor who treated her ordered the HIV test as part of a slate of exams that included chickenpox and syphilis. And ICE’s medical coordinator said Medina Leon denied any history of known HIV exposure when they spoke at the hospital.
Under ICE policy, detainees receive comprehensive health assessments within two weeks of being booked into a facility. But staff at the Otero detention center told investigators that lab tests are not standard and are typically ordered by doctors in specific cases for certain preexisting conditions. ICE doesn’t proactively screen detainees for HIV.
ICE’s own medical experts had warned the agency about patients like Medina Leon. Two months before her death, the same medical coordinator who recommended Medina Leon’s release suggested the agency begin treating transgender detainees as “chronic” patients in order to facilitate earlier diagnoses.
The coordinator had also flagged several healthcare deficiencies at Otero. Among the issues: Detainees with identified chronic conditions weren’t evaluated quickly enough, the level of urgency for cases wasn’t documented by providers in referrals to outside specialists, and detainees arriving with prescribed medications were “not having their medications continued.”
Despite a slew of unresolved questions, investigators closed their case on Medina Leon’s death in September 2020, concluding there was no “evidence of malfeasance or policy violations.” Aside from the ICE medical coordinator who recommended her release, Medina Leon’s entire medical team of more than seven people was employed by private contractor MTC.
In an email, the Office of Inspector General stood behind its investigation, which found “no misconduct by DHS staff or contractor personnel.” Officials declined to explain the decision to investigate Medina Leon’s death, but noted that it was one of two ICE out-of-custody deaths reviewed by the agency since 2003.
ICE spokeswoman Hughes noted that the agency’s policy of reviewing detainee deaths was updated in October 2021 to include deaths that occur within a month of release from custody “when appropriate, to ensure accountability and maximum transparency.”
‘A death sentence’
Healthcare experts say deaths like Medina Leon’s are avoidable.
“Young women don’t have to die of sepsis, for God’s sake,” said Coleen Kivlahan, medical director of the human rights asylum clinic at UC San Francisco. “Was this death preventable by early screening and early care? The answer would be yes.”
Kivlahan said any medical provider with experience treating trans patients would have checked for HIV early on, particularly in cases of severe weight loss. Many of the trans patients she sees in her clinic — who are seeking asylum in the U.S. after trauma and abuse in their home countries — are HIV-positive, but go largely undiagnosed while in detention.
Activists quickly sounded the alarm about Medina Leon’s death in 2019, noting its striking similarities to that of another trans woman who died in ICE custody a year earlier.
As with Medina Leon, Roxsana Hernandez’s HIV went untreated throughout her detention until her condition worsened, landing her in the hospital in 2018. She died of dehydration and complications from HIV less than a month after arriving at the Tijuana border from Honduras and requesting asylum. Hernandez never received an intake medical screening, said Dale Melchert, who led a wrongful-death lawsuit for the Transgender Law Center.
Unlike with Medina Leon, Hernandez’s death was officially recorded by ICE, requiring the agency to notify Congress and disclose some records.
Both women made repeated requests for medical attention as they experienced telltale signs of untreated HIV: weight loss, yellowing skin, fever and disorientation.
“In both Roxsana and Johana’s cases, treatable medical conditions became a death sentence,” Melchert said. Had the government provided Hernandez “with the care she was entitled to within 12 hours of custody, she would be here today,” he said.
Watchdog groups have urged Congress to investigate and publicize death reviews for people released from immigration custody just before they die, including during a 2019 House committee hearing on oversight of ICE detention three months after Medina Leon’s death.
Advocates say quantifying how many cases like Medina Leon’s exist is difficult because ICE has historically refused to provide basic information about detainees who die just after being released from custody. In addition to Medina Leon, the ACLU lawsuit names Martin Vargas Arellano, Jose Ibarra Bucio and Teka Gulema, each of whom died soon after release.
Vargas Arellano contracted COVID-19 at the Adelanto ICE Processing Facility in San Bernardino County and had a stroke. The 55-year-old from Mexico was released from custody last year while brain-dead at a local hospital. He had repeatedly asked to be released from detention because of health conditions including diabetes, hypertension and hepatitis C.
Ibarra Bucio, a 27-year-old from Mexico who was also detained at Adelanto, had a brain hemorrhage in 2019 and was transferred to a hospital while comatose. He died four weeks after being released from ICE custody when his family took him off life support.
Gulema, a 33-year-old Ethiopian man, became paralyzed from a bacterial infection while detained at a facility in Alabama and was transferred to a hospital where he remained for nearly a year. He was released from custody weeks before he died in 2016 at the hospital.
“How many more individuals are out there that we don’t know about?” Cho said.
There are more. Guatemalan toddler Mariee Juárez, who acquired a viral lung infection while detained in Texas in 2018 and died at a hospital weeks after being released. Oscar López Acosta, who was infected with COVID-19 in an Ohio facility in 2020 and was released as his health deteriorated and died two weeks later. And Saliou Ndiaye from Senegal, who attempted suicide at Adelanto in 2017 and was released from custody while on life support.
Hoping to ensure the government’s continued responsibility for Ndiaye’s care, his lawyer Carrye Washington asked an immigration judge to find that ICE could not release an unconscious person and order him back into custody. Washington said the judge declined to intervene, and Ndiaye remains on life support.
Ten days passed after Vargas Arellano died before his lawyer learned about it by filing a missing-person’s report and calling the coroner’s office.
A court-appointed investigation into his death led to a scathing special master’s report last July on the actions of ICE, Adelanto and its contract healthcare provider, Wellpath. The report notes that the decision to release Vargas Arellano while comatose and near death resulted in his being “moved off the ‘books’ at ICE.”
“Because ICE released him to the hospital, all three were relieved of their obligations to report his death,” the report states. “Further, this seems to have been the sole purpose of the release.”
ICE declined to comment on Arellano’s case and others reviewed by The Times.
Dr. Marc Stern, a physician specializing in correctional healthcare who has served as an expert for the DHS Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, said that it may be more fiscally responsible to release someone from custody who is hospitalized. That way, he said, the government avoids spending taxpayer money on guards and paying medical bills that some hospitals already cover for low-income patients.
But Stern said that flouting reporting requirements indicates there could also be a political motivation in ICE’s release of sick detainees. All deaths should be reported, he noted, particularly when someone’s health deteriorates under ICE’s watch.
“Our system is fundamentally flawed in not defining deaths completely enough,” Stern said.
Rafe Foreman, a Texas attorney who represented Medina Leon’s family in their wrongful-death lawsuit, said he believes ICE has an incentive to release people who are about to die.
The case named as defendants MTC and its employees — the Otero facility warden and four healthcare providers. ICE and the Department of Homeland Security were not parties to the lawsuit, which was dismissed in court. Foreman said the case was resolved but declined to say whether there was an out-of-court settlement. Medina Leon’s parents declined to comment.
“This was the worst case of medical malpractice that I’ve seen in a while,” Foreman said. “From the minute she walked in there until she died, she was neglected.”
In court filings, lawyers for MTC denied the allegations, argued that Medina Leon’s family had no basis to receive punitive damages and said the case should be dismissed.
The lawyers also spelled out what happened after she died: No medical personnel were disciplined, and “no changes in policy, practice, protocols or procedures occurred.”
Leonard Peltier has been in prison for over four decades. (photo: Jeffry Scott)
Calls are growing for President Biden to grant clemency to Leonard Peltier, the 77-year-old imprisoned Native American activist who has spent 46 years behind bars for a crime he says he did not commit. Amnesty International considers Peltier a political prisoner, and numerous legal observers say his 1977 conviction for alleged involvement in killing two FBI agents in a shootout on the Pine Ridge Reservation was riddled with irregularities and prosecutorial misconduct. “At this point, there’s no reason other than vindictive revenge for him to be in prison,” says writer and activist Nick Estes, co-founder of the Indigenous resistance group The Red Nation. “He survived COVID, he’s in poor health, and the man deserves to be with his people,” says Estes, who calls for a full congressional investigation into the deaths of Indigenous activists on Pine Ridge Reservation, where the shootout that led to Peltier’s arrest occurred.
SEN. BRIAN SCHATZ: A final question, easy one: What is your position on clemency for Leonard Peltier?
ATTORNEY GENERAL MERRICK GARLAND: So, this is a matter that goes into — applications go to the pardon attorney. Pardon attorney makes recommendations through the deputy attorney general to the president. And so I’m not going to comment on that now.
SEN. BRIAN SCHATZ: Can you comment on where we are in the process?
ATTORNEY GENERAL MERRICK GARLAND: I don’t — I assume, but don’t know, that an application has been made. I actually don’t even know whether — I mean, I’ve read about this in the press, so I don’t know anything more about it than what I’ve read in the press.
SEN. BRIAN SCHATZ: And this doesn’t cross your desk?
ATTORNEY GENERAL MERRICK GARLAND: Certainly not as an initial or even secondary matter. This goes to the pardon attorney and then the deputy attorney general. I’m not saying I wouldn’t be involved, but it certainly has not crossed my desk.
SEN. BRIAN SCHATZ: Thank you very much.
AMY GOODMAN: Nick Estes, can you talk about Leonard Peltier? You recently currently co-wrote a piece for The Guardian headlined “Leonard Peltier is America’s longest-held Indigenous prisoner. He should be freed.”
NICK ESTES: Yeah. It’s important to point out, first of all, Leonard Peltier is a product of this federal Indian boarding school system. He was actually — his name was actually mentioned in the press conference yesterday on this particular initiative. And in fact, it’s also important to point out that during her tenure as a congresswoman for New Mexico, Deb Haaland was a strident advocate for Leonard Peltier’s release. And so we’re seeing a growing momentum around the question of Leonard Peltier’s continued unjust imprisonment. And the Obama administration had an opportunity to correct the course of history in releasing Leonard Peltier or granting him clemency, because that’s the only option on the table right now for his release.
But he is an elder. He’s an endeared elder to his community. Turtle Mountain Ojibwe have a plan in place so that once he is released, he has housing and he’s taken in by the community itself. You have Representative Ruth Buffalo from North Dakota, who’s up for reelection this year, who’s been a strident advocate for Leonard Peltier, who talks to Leonard Peltier on a weekly basis. And so you have this massive support from Indian Country, from elected officials to tribal governments, advocating for his release.
And if we want true justice in this country, whether it’s for the boarding school system, something that Leonard Peltier himself was fighting against as part of the American Indian Movement, then we also need to not only advocate for his release, but advocate for a full congressional investigation into the conditions that led to the shootout at the Jumping Bull property in 1975 and the multiple, the tens, you know, the dozens of deaths that have gone unsolved on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation during the so-called reign of terror following the occupation of Wounded Knee in 1973.
And so, this is an open wound for Indian Country. It’s an open wound for the federal government. And his committee is advocating for healing. And the first step of that process is to grant him clemency. At this point, there’s no reason other than vindictive revenge for him to be in prison. He survived COVID, he’s in poor health, and the man deserves to be with his people.
AMY GOODMAN: Why don’t we end with Leonard Peltier’s voice? By the way, his new attorney is a former chief judge from Tennessee. But I spoke to Leonard, oh, 10 years ago — that’s this clip — on the phone in a Florida prison.
AMY GOODMAN: Leonard, this is Amy Goodman from Democracy Now! I was —
LEONARD PELTIER: Oh, hi, Amy. How are you?
AMY GOODMAN: Hi. I’m good. I was wondering if you have a message for President Obama?
LEONARD PELTIER: I just hope he can, you know, stop the wars that are going on in this world, and stop getting — killing all those people getting killed, and, you know, give the Black Hills back to my people, and turn me loose.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you share with people at the news conference and with President Obama your case for why you should be — your sentence should be commuted, why you want clemency?
LEONARD PELTIER: Well, I never got a fair trial, for one. … They wouldn’t allow me to put up a defense, and manufactured evidence, manufactured witnesses, tortured witnesses. You know, the list is — just goes on. So I think I’m a very good candidate for — after 37 years, for clemency or house arrest, at least.
AMY GOODMAN: I was speaking to Leonard Peltier at a public forum a day after a major event at the Beacon Theatre had taken place in his honor and to raise money for his support here in New York City. Well,, Nick Estes, we thank you for being with us, writer, historian, author of Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance, co-founder of The Red Nation.
You can link to all of our interviews with Leonard Peltier, as well as my questioning of President Clinton at the time, whether he would be granting clemency, and you hear Leonard Peltier himself talking about asking President Obama for that. Now the question is: What will President Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland do?
This is Democracy Now! Next up, we go to Mexico, where three journalists have been killed in the last week, bringing the toll to 11 so far this year, making Mexico the deadliest country in the world for journalists, behind Ukraine. Stay with us.
Women protest the Legislative Assembly during a demonstration to demand legal abortion in San Salvador, El Salvador. (photo: Roque Alvarenga/Getty Images)
A woman who sought care at a hospital for an obstetric emergency was instead accused of abortion and found guilty of aggravated homicide in a country with a total ban on abortion.
The Citizen Group for the Decriminalization of Abortion said Tuesday in a statement that a woman they identified only as “Esme” was sentenced Monday. The woman had already been in pre-trial detention for two years following her arrest when she sought medical care in a public hospital.
“The judge acted with partiality, giving greater weight to the version offered by the Attorney General’s Office, which was loaded with stigmas and gender stereotypes,” the group said. They said they would appeal.
The sentence could not be immediately confirmed because the courts were closed Tuesday for Mother’s Day.
El Salvador maintains a total ban on abortion and a number of women have been arrested and sentenced to prison after suffering apparent miscarriages that were reported to authorities.
In the past two decade, nearly 180 women have been prosecuted. Since 2009, the government has released 64 of them. Just since December, eight women serving long prison sentences have had those sentences commuted.
A firefighter monitors the Dixie fire near Janesville, California, which burned more than 800,000 acres and destroyed over 1,000 structures. (photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
How the proposal to connect federal research agencies and improve wildfire research crashed and burned.
New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham called this year’s wildfire season “dangerously early,” but premature fire seasons catching local, state, or federal authorities off-guard has long been a concern for fire managers and fire researchers. To get ahead of that problem, some members of Congress have a solution. But that legislation hit a bureaucratic roadblock last autumn and has basically died.
Last year, during a Congressional hearing on the state of wildfire research, researchers and fire managers said that coordination among federal agencies to improve wildfire research would be tremendously helpful to prepare for future fires. Partnerships between research agencies, like NOAA, and forest management agencies like, the Department of the Interior, or DOI, do exist. The Joint Fire Science Program, for example, has been helpful in getting necessary information to stakeholders on the ground when wildfires spread. But what these programs often don’t do is connect all the relevant science research agencies together that contribute pieces to the wildfire fighting puzzle.
“[Research agencies] currently provide research and tools, such as fire weather predictions, satellite imagery, predictive fire analysis research and building codes,” testified Erik Litzenberg, Chair of the Wildland Fire Policy Committee of the International Association of Fire Chiefs. “A standardized warning system would help emergency managers and the public act as the fire develops.”
In the wake of the hearing, and the record-breaking wildfires that swept the West in 2020 and 2021, a group of Western House Democrats introduced a bill last October hoping to fill that research gap. The National Wildland Fire Risk Reduction Program Act aims to “to support the development of novel tools and technologies to improve understanding, monitoring, prediction, and mitigation of wildland fires, associated smoke, and their impacts.”
In practice, the bill codifies coordinated wildfire research between agencies like NASA, NOAA, The Department of Energy, Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the Environmental Protection Agency. The bill would also help facilitate collaboration from a host of other agencies including the United States Forest Service and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The bill would allocate over $2 billion to fund research into writing fire codes, supporting wildfire related classes for university students, improve smoke modeling, and study how wildfires might affect nationwide energy grids. The end result of the coordinated research could have improved how first responders prepare for, and manage, wildfires.
But the bill has stalled in Congress, caught in a parliamentary maze: To prevent slowing the bill’s passage, lawmakers opted to keep legislation’s jurisdiction limited to the House Committee on Space, Science, and Technology, effectively barring any direct conversations with firefighters and forest managers – services under the umbrella of different congressional committees. That carve out led Republicans to conclude that the bill wouldn’t be truly comprehensive, while representatives opined that their Democratic colleagues did not include them as directly in the bill drafting process. As such, Ranking Member of the House Science Committee, Oklahoma Representative Frank Lucas, indicated that the bill would have “no legislative future.”
But in New Mexico, less than half of the Hermits Peak Fire is fully contained, and firefighters haven’t yet managed to contain any of the Bear Trap Fire that’s burning near the San Mateo Mountains. Officials say that costs to contain the fires, so far, have hit $65 million. The region’s wildfire season can last through December.
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