Code Red: The Fatal Consequences of Dangerously Substandard Medical Care in Immigration Detention

By studying the records kept by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) about the people who have died in immigration detention, the authors of this report found deep, systemic problems with the medical care in those facilities—failures that contributed to death in more than half of the cases reported by ICE for the 16 months between December 2015 and April 2017.

Coauthored by the American Civil Liberties Union, Detention Watch Network, Human Rights Watch, and the National Immigrant Justice Center, “Code Red” contains timelines of the symptoms shown by people who died in ICE detention and the treatment they received from medical staff, along with medical experts’ commentary on the care and its deviations from common medical practice. The cases expose dangerous lapses in basic medical procedures; botched responses to emergencies; and medical neglect that becomes cruel, then fatal.