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Title: HIV-positive migrants (read, illegals) accuse US of neglect
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URL Source: http://www.mail.com/Article.aspx?ar ... ml&cat=health&subcat=&pageid=1
Published: Aug 4, 2008
Author: JULIE WATSON
Post Date: 2008-08-04 21:22:01 by Jethro Tull
Keywords: None
Views: 214
Comments: 8
HIV-positive migrants accuse US of neglect Monday, August 04, 2008 9:35:46 PM By JULIE WATSON Olga Arellano sobs as she recalls how her HIV-positive daughter spent two months succumbing to infections in a U.S. migrant detention center, complaining that she didn't see a doctor or get the right medicine. Fellow inmates also begged for help after Victoria Arellano started vomiting blood in their holding cell, where her lawyer said 105 detainees were crammed onto bunks and mattresses in a space designed for 40. She died three days later, chained to a hospital bed. The death of the 23-year-old transgender Mexican immigrant is at the forefront of discussions at this week's international AIDS conference in Mexico City. Rights Other Health Photos activists say it shows the failure of immigration officials to deal humanely with HIV-positive inmates among the 30,000 migrants held in detention centers across the United States. New York-based Human Rights Watch surveyed detention center officials and inmates after Arellano's death and found 14 cases in which it said HIV-infected immigrants were not given proper care while in custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Presented with details of the allegations by the Arellano family and the rights group, ICE spokesman Brandon A. Alvarez-Montgomery told the AP that he couldn't comment since Arellano is suing the agency. When Human Rights Watch first presented its report in December, ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice said "ensuring the welfare and safety of those in our custody is one of our top priorities." Activists say many HIV-infected migrants in U.S. detention centers are not given their medicine regularly, which is crucial to their survival. People with HIV can live otherwise healthy lives if they take a strict regimen of specific medications each day and closely monitor their blood cells to be sure their immune systems are working. That's difficult to do for people being deported, particularly in overcrowded detention centers. When the regimen is interrupted, the virus rebounds and the immune system crashes. The family's lawyer, Steven Archer, says Arellano never got proper medical attention after she was stopped for drunk driving and handed over to immigration officials in June 2007. "They never gave her any of the proper medications for her AIDS diagnosis. They did give her a prescription for a urinary tract infection, but even then, they filled her prescription with the wrong strength, and they never diagnosed the meningitis, even though she had been complaining about headaches, sweats and generalized pain for weeks. That is what killed her in the end," Archer said. "It was so advanced that it involved her brain, her liver, her lungs, her heart, and a couple of other organs. She died in terrible pain."
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#1. To: Jethro Tull (#0)
NPR also injecting this story into the nation's blood stream on our dime today.
Just damn
"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”—Samuel Adams
Don't do the crime if you can't do the time.
What? Crime is fine on the American dime.
Give me your tired, your poor, your AIDS infected needy...
www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93278581 - by Carrie Kahn.
This is tragic, as are the rapes and AIDS death sentences of whites who are imprisoned with blacks. I wish someone would write about that. Whites who receive short sentences for relatively minor felonies or misdemeanors may die from the fact that the system won't protect them from black inmates who run the prisons nationwide. Finally, now that the prisons riot every time they try to put blacks and Hispanics together in CA, finally, they're separating them. They wouldn't segregate to protect white inmates' lives, but they'll do it when corrections officers are at risk of dying from the violence.
History reminder: the purpose of Ellis Island was to screen and reject defective immigrants before they hit mainland.
#2. To: Jethro Tull (#0)
#3. To: Jethro Tull (#0)
I've already said too much.
#4. To: MUDDOG (#3)
#5. To: buckeye, MUDDOG, all (#1)
#6. To: Jethro Tull (#5)
#7. To: Jethro Tull (#0)
#8. To: Jethro Tull, All (#0)
“The best and first guarantor of our neutrality and our independent existence is the defensive will of the people…and the proverbial marksmanship of the Swiss shooter. Each soldier a good marksman! Each shot a hit!” Schweizerische Schutzenseitunt (Swiss Shooting Federation) April, 1941
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