Is it too radical to believe that hospitals should be like churches? That they should be safe spaces where people can get what they went their for, health care? Instead a court decision has legitimized hospitals acting as ICE agents and Homeland Security.

A hospital that sent a seriously brain injured illegal immigrant back to Guatemala – over the objections of his family and legal guardian – did not act unreasonably, a jury found Monday…

Health care and immigration experts across the country have closely watched the court case in the sleepy, coastal town of Stuart. The hospital had cared for Jimenez, who was uninsured, for three years. But it was unable to find any nursing home to take him permanently because his immigration status meant the government would not reimburse his care.

It seems that across the country, everyone thinks they are on a sick reality show called “So you want to be an ICE agent.” New 287(g) programs deputize local police, local jails are de facto immigrant detention centers, and now hospitals are given the green light to dispose of sick immigrant bodies all in the name of the almighty dollar.

As health care reform stalls in Washington, the message is sent that the possibly undocumented, illegitimate president wants to spend countless amounts on insuring the undocumented,
ignoring the fact that current law doesn’t allow this, and that my poor ass without a lease can’t get insurance. The follow the $ excuse ignores the billions that undocumented workers bring into the country. And meanwhile inside immigrant detention centers, people are dying due to poor care and outright neglect because the Obama administration is more concerned with the money that private contractors bring in than the human rights of people behind multiple layers of walls, both physical and metaphorical.

The President will have a cold one with a racially profiling police officer and an upper class professor of color racially profiled in the name of moving the race dialogue forward, in the meantime, the machinery of prisons and hospitals alike discard brown bodies.

Via / The Latin Americanist