‘Depriving us of basic human needs’: Detained Tufts student details conditions at ICE facility
A Tufts University student who was arrested by immigration officers in March and has since been held in a Louisiana facility is claiming that her health is declining while she remains detained there.
In a May 2 federal court filing , 30-year-old doctoral candidate Rümeysa Öztürk wrote that she's experienced an increased number of asthma attacks over the last five weeks. The Turkish citizen — who has yet to be charged with a crime — also said she and other detainees at the facility have had difficulty accessing proper medical care and been repeatedly mistreated by guards and medical staff.
"The overall conditions described above and others, depriving us of basic human needs, is also negatively contributing to my overall health. I can see how the cumulative effect of lack of proper food, sleep, safe and clean accommodations, and medical care has negatively contributed to several women here, especially those who have been here for a year or longer and those who are pregnant," the filing reads.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) did not respond to a request for comment Monday evening.
Asthma attacks
In her latest court filing, Öztürk claimed she's had eight asthma attacks since her arrest. Prior to her detainment, she only experienced a handful of such attacks each year, she said.
Öztürk's asthma attacks have also begun lasting longer, she wrote. Normally, they last up to 15 minutes, but at the facility, they've lasted as long as 45 minutes, forcing her to use her emergency inhaler multiple times, she said.
"It has become progressively harder to recover from these asthma attacks while in detention," she wrote. " ... I am very concerned about the severity of these attacks and my ability to manage them. ... The cumulative effect of these asthma attacks leaves me feeling exhausted and anxious."
Öztürk has had access to her emergency inhaler since the beginning, but facility staff did not allow her access to her daily inhaler — which helps prevent asthma attacks — for two weeks after she arrived, she wrote. Additionally, given her limited ability to avoid asthma triggers while detained, she's also experienced mild coughing fits more frequently, she said.
Poor medical care
Öztürk also wrote about the difficulties she and other women at the ICE facility have had accessing proper medical care. Their only method of requesting medical attention is through a tablet, and she's seen some detainees wait weeks for a response to their request, she said.
When other women at the facility have alerted guards that they need medical care, they've sometimes waited days to be seen by a medical professional, Öztürk wrote. Additionally, detainees who are taken to the facility's medical center told her they've waited hours before being seen or not been seen at all after waiting hours, she said.
Other women at the facility with serious conditions like cancer or a miscarriage have told Öztürk that nurses have treated them with ibuprofen alone, and that some waited weeks or months to receive any care at all, she wrote. Some detainees told her that the medical center's staff have tried to convince them their symptoms are merely due to stress, or that it is impossible that they could be severely ill, she said.
"My own experiences, including a nurse forcibly removing my hijab against my consent, another nurse telling me an asthma attack was 'all in your head,' another nurse saying to me, 'you are giving me a headache,' and a doctor telling me 'I cannot babysit you' when I tried to ask questions, have all led me to believe that many of the medical staff do not believe us or listen to us, and will not take appropriate care of us," she wrote.
Even when a detainee is experiencing an urgent medical issue, medical care is often delayed, Öztürk wrote. For instance, after the start of her second asthma attack, an hour passed before she was taken to the medical center despite other detainees banging on the walls to try to get the guards' attention, she said.
Mistreatment by facility staff
Guards, nurses and doctors often yell — sometimes to the point of being "verbally abusive," Öztürk wrote. They're also often rude, retaliatory or physically violent toward detainees, she said.
On one occasion, a guard threatened to take away a woman's phone privileges because she kept asking questions about her transfer, Öztürk wrote. On another, a guard pushed two detainees in the dining hall, she said.
"The general environment is where each moment is filled with stress and control," she wrote.
It is also difficult for detainees to sleep, as the guards come into the dorm rooms multiple times a night, are loud at all hours and only weakly dim the lights in the dorms for a few hours each night, Öztürk wrote. For the first three weeks she was at the center, the guards entered each dorm room every 15 to 20 minutes throughout the night, she said.
Additionally, the facility's food is often undercooked or unhealthy, Öztürk wrote. As a vegetarian, she's rarely received adequate accommodations, and other detainees with dietary restrictions — such as those with diabetes — have experienced the same, she said.
Could Öztürk be released?
Öztürk and her lawyers have so far unsuccessfully fought for her release and transfer of her case back to Vermont since her arrest on March 25 by plain-clothed ICE agents on the street in Somerville, Massachusetts. After her arrest, ICE whisked her away to New Hampshire, then Vermont and finally Louisiana.
Last month, a federal judge in Vermont determined that Öztürk's case should be transferred , and that she should be given another chance at release, but a federal appeals court later paused the judge's order pending a hearing scheduled for Tuesday.
Öztürk's lawyers claim the Trump administration revoked her student visa without warning because she co-authored a pro-Palestinian op-ed in Tufts' student newspaper last year. Federal officials claim she supports Hamas.
More coverage of the case
Read the original article on MassLive .
