Social Worker At Immigrant Detention Facility Says It Is Like Jail And Like Torture

Silvia Lopez, Social Worker

[From article]
She described a facility where guards isolated mothers and children in medical units, nurses falsified medical reports, staff members were told to lie to federal officials and a psychologist acted as an informant for federal agents.
[. . .]
The facility is operated by the nation’s second-largest for-profit prison company, Boca Raton, Fla.,-based GEO Group, and overseen by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
López’s story is a troubling counter narrative to the accounts given by federal officials and company representatives who describe the facility as a safe and comfortable place where mothers and children can stay during their asylum proceedings.
[. . .]
But López said nothing changes the fact that the children were locked up and under the threat of being deported at any moment.
[. . .]
Her masters’ thesis looked at the living conditions of immigrants. Her dissertation for her Ph.D. focused on immigrant women and health.
She was not naive to the mothers’ immigration status. She knew many would be deported, but López felt she could make a positive difference by helping them with the transition either back home or into the United States.
It was not her expertise that company officials sought, she said. They hired her to help give the appearance of a well-supported medical unit, she said.
[. . .]
López said she quit in April because she could no longer work in a facility that asked her to withhold information from federal officials, punished residents who required medical treatment and required her to follow policies that she said were in violation of her license.
“What is happening there is tantamount to torture,” she said.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article28696174.html

JULY 27, 2015
Exclusive: Family detention social worker speaks out
BY FRANCO ORDOÑEZ
fordonez (at) mcclatchydc.com