The 911 Calls Inside ICE Detention Centers

[Archival audio]: No, madam.

[Archival audio]: I need help, UTA.

[Archival audio]: Are you in prison?

[Archival audio]: Yes. In prison, yes, by name …

Dhruv Mehrotra: So he called the sender again. When the sender called again, one of the employees answered on the phone, and he refused mainly, saying: “Look, sorry, we are at a detention center, one of the detainees is called 911.” No ambulance was sent.

[Archival audio]: I’m sorry, we are in a-

[Archival audio]: [Inaudible]

[Archival audio]: We are a detention center, the Stewart detention center, and the detention calls 911. I’m sorry.

[Archival audio]: Fine, thank you.

Dhruv Mehrotra: Even in that call, you can hear this type of pleading in the background. It is clear that this is the moment someone believed that they needed medical care, and they were unable to obtain it, and they were prevented from obtaining it. In fact, this is just one example, many family members told us who are detainees with the same thing. Their loved ones were unable to get the care they needed, even at times when they believed that their loved ones should have been brought to the hospital for a serious crisis.

Leah Fegar: Well, as I said, I spoke to family members and also spoke to a lawyer and immigration experts to really fill these gaps and weaken what you found because you received 911 calls and not much more. What are some of these gaps that they filled with you?

Dhruv Mehrotra: We were keen not to deal with 911 data as the full story, because sometimes our sound is sometimes, and sometimes, just a brief narration of the medical emergency. So these calls pick up only moments when emergency situations are bad enough or insufficiently visible to employees to capture the phone and call. But experts and preachers are rushing to point out that there is likely that there are many others. So in the talks we had with lawyers and families and previously detention, those talks were decisive, they gave us the context that the records were unable to alone. A woman named Milderd Pierre, her fiancé is a double -held amputation in Stewart. She told us that last month or so, his artificial limbs broke in the fall. He had to wait until the medical staff in Stewart. Another example is a woman named Kylie Chinchilla said that her daughter, a nursing student with scoliosis and also held in Stewart, often left asleep on the ground with parts of her face. And her condition gets worse and she suffers.

Leah Fegar: Let’s take a quick break. We will return to the right. When we go back, we will look further in what led to this increase in medical emergency situations in ice centers. When looking at the factors that led to this increase in medical emergencies in ice centers, overcrowding is one of the main factors. Dhruv, can you tell me how bad is now? Is this a direct result of the suppression of immigration in the current administration?