In a 25 May op-ed, Grace Meng (a senior U.S. researcher at Human Rights Watch) and Christina Fialho (an attorney and the co-executive director of CIVIC – Community Initiatives for Visiting Immigrants in Confinement) write that ICE is required to investigate every death in detention and produce a “detainee death report,” but it generally does not publicly release these reports. ICE provides only sparse information about deaths in detention in its news release — the person’s name, nationality, and occasionally immigration or criminal history.

Meng and Fialho report that last June, ICE took the unusual step of releasing reports covering 18 of the 21 deaths of immigrants in detention from May 2012 through June 2015. At the request of HRW and CIVIC,  independent medical experts analyzed the facts and timelines, as documented by ICE’s own investigation. They found that the patients had received appropriate care in only two cases. In 16 of the deaths, the experts found evidence of severely inadequate medical care. In seven of the cases, they concluded that the poor medical care directly contributed to the deaths of these immigrants.

Thanks to the Marshall Project for highlighting this story.

How do removals of information and limitations of access pertain to the Administrative State?  What is this thing (if it is, indeed, a thing), from where/whom does the concept come, and where does it lead (cui bono)?  Is it the immutable, first principles, originalist reading of the Constitution its proponents would have us believe — or is it quite mutable to suit the purposes of those it benefits?

This concept and how it relates to what is being done to our government and the career civil servants who make it work will be one of the focuses of Government Information Watch.

Continue reading →