If you have solid tips, news or documents on potential ethical violations or abuses of power, we want to know. Send us your suggestions. 
Unfortunately I believe that we are limited in what we can focus on. I think that if we proceed with the partisan sideshow of prosecuting Bush admin. officials, healthcare will get lost in the brouhaha.
The Washington Post's permanent investigative unit was set up in 1982 under Bob Woodward.
GAO Says Detainee Abuse Not 'Pervasive'
An official in charge of keeping government officials in line regarding the treatment of immigrant detainees told the House Judiciary Committee today that a review of records at U.S. facilities did not reveal widespread problems regarding medical care.
Richard M. Stana, GAO's director of Homeland Security and Justice Issues, told the House Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security and International Law that annual inspection reports from Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities did not show more than a handful of documented cases of abuse related to the medical treatment of immigrant detainees.
"At the time of our visits, we observed instances of noncompliance with ICE's medical care standards at three of the 23 facilities we visited," Stana said. "However, these instances did not show a pervasive or persistent pattern of noncompliance across the facilities."
Stana's testimony follows The Post's four-part "Careless Detention" series that examined medical treatment provided to immigrants by the federal government.
By Derek Kravitz |
June 4, 2008; 7:50 PM ET
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Posted by: Question | June 5, 2008 7:46 AM
How is the General Accounting Office going to effectively investigate immigrant detainee abuses? Do they think that the government officials and staff are simply going to report each and every incident or even most of them so that this unsatisfactory record will be made and kept of the books??? Do they not understand that if an "inspection is planned" the officials and staff are aware and make sure that there are no problems or that these inspectors do not see any of the problems in the healthcare system because if there were "real and regular inspections of these facilities" anyone with any sense at all could see some these ongoing problems. The people in the Washington Post Report were seriously ill and suffering for quite some time during their detention and even an untrained person could determine that those people required urgent medial attention that they were not receiving in those facilities. Many of these people had been in immigrant detention facilities a year or more. Obviously this inspection team never saw any of them.
So how did the Post get this information but none of the government inspectors noticed any serious problems with the healthcare system -- were they hidden from view during their inspections or were their inspections the usual brief, cursory, walkthroughs of certain areas of the facility (or maybe not even any walkthroughs).
Posted by: hotezzy | June 5, 2008 3:33 PM
An official in charge of keeping government officials in line regarding the treatment of immigrant detainees told the House Judiciary Committee today that a review of records at U.S. facilities did not reveal widespread problems regarding medical care.
This is what's called the Wolfs guarding the hen house! Yeah, just like the incidents at our Concentration Camps in Cuba and Iraq and Afghanistan were only a few widespread problems... Hey Americans this Government thinks we are stupid!
Kick the Lying official out of office now, then Impeach Bush then Cheney!
Posted by: Ceci | June 5, 2008 7:54 PM
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Of course abuse is terrible. But any institutional detention is likely to include cases of abuse. We want to minimize it, but we probably can't eliminate it. The question isn't whether detainees suffer more abuse than people who are not detained -- the question is whether they suffer *more* abuse than other people who are detained. Illegal immigrants are criminals. Are they abused more than other criminals in detention? The Post series never asks this question, and so ends up being heart wrenching with respect to individual cases, but silly over all.