Cruel and unusual: The case of Francisco Casta
By
Max J. Castro Read Spanish Version
majcastro@gmail.com
The
passage of Proposition 187 in California in 1994 signaled the
beginning of a new era of xenophobia and anti-immigrant politics
framed around the theme of “illegal immigration.” The movement
that burst into the scene in the mid-1990s scored some successes over
the next few years but also faced serious legal setbacks and strong
political and economic obstacles.
The
overall results hardly satisfied the expectations of ardent
anti-immigration advocates. In fact, the percentage of foreign-born
persons in the U.S. population is continuing to rise, legal
immigration has remained at high levels, and undocumented immigration
has risen sharply.
Yet,
for all their ineffectiveness, anti-immigrant policies did not fail
to take a toll on immigrants who suddenly were denied a wide array of
public services and became subject to deportation for relatively
petty crimes committed decades earlier. At the same time, these same
policies frustrated nativists who feared continuing immigration meant
a cultural transformation of the United States.
This
frustration is the driving force behind the latest round of
anti-immigrant acts and policies, including stepped-up raids at
workplaces and homes, which have devastated and terrorized many
immigrant families and sown a climate of fear in immigrant
communities.
The
effects of the new crackdown on immigrants are being felt at many
levels, from the individual to the international. The Inter-American
Development Bank reports, for instance, that for the first time, in
2007, remittances sent from the United States to Latin America failed
to increase. For Mexico, the biggest remittance-receiving country in
the hemisphere, the dollar flow actually decreased. While the
economic slowdown in the United States no doubt has played a role in
curtailing the transfer of money by Latin American immigrants, so
have sharply increased deportations and the voluntary departure of
many immigrants fearful of arrest and harassment.
At
the local level, the everyday lives of Latinos and the communities
where they lived have been affected by anti-immigrant measures
adopted at the state, county, and municipal levels. Latino soccer
leagues, which used to thrive in Prince William County, Virginia,
have suspended their season, or moved their games elsewhere, fearing
new laws that empower the local police to check immigration status.
In the same vein, Latino rappers who live in Washington, DC, and are
citizens or legal residents of the United States, told a newspaper
reporter that they carry their passports whenever they venture into
the Virginia suburbs. And, in some towns that had been revitalized by
immigrant entrepreneurs, anti-immigrant ordinances have led to the
loss of businesses and a decrease in government revenue as well as
the return of urban decay.
The
implications of the anti-immigrant climate can be much more serious
than feeling the need to carry around a passport. A case that
illustrates the awful consequences of a poisonous mix of
anti-immigrant policies, government belt- tightening at the expense
of the poor, and a mercenary medical system is that of Francisco
Castañeda, a Salvadoran undocumented immigrant under detention
by U.S. immigration authorities until shortly before his death of
cancer, February 16.
Castañeda’s
case, reported in The
Los Angeles Times,
evokes memories of Nazi medical experiments and the infamous Tuskegee
experiment in which medical treatment was withheld from black
subjects in order to study the progression of syphilis. In
Castañeda’s case, the U.S. government withheld diagnosis and
treatment for eleven months resulting in eventual death without even
the pretext of a scientific purpose.
Details
of Castañeda’s case surfaced as a result of a lawsuit filed
against the government by his family. The facts in the case are as
clear as they are appalling. Suffering from a growing and
increasingly painful lesion on the penis, in March 2006, Castañeda
sought medical treatment and was examined by a physician’s
assistant who indicated a biopsy should be performed.
The
government declined to perform the test. Indeed, for almost a year
after the initial examination, immigration officials refused to
authorize the diagnostic procedure. This despite the fact that, as
extensive government records presented at the trial show, several
doctors found that Castañeda needed the biopsy urgently
because of his condition and a family history of cancer. By the time
Castañeda was able to obtain a biopsy in 2007, after his hasty
release by the government, the cancer had spread. Castañeda
subsequently died but not before his penis was amputated and he had
subjected himself to chemotherapy, which was unsuccessful.
How
and why did the U.S. government refuse to perform a biopsy on the
detainee, in so doing ignoring expert medical advice, including the
recommendations of an urologist?
The
evidence indicates that Dr. Esther Hui, of the Division of
Immigration Health Services, while acknowledging Castaneda’s
condition, decided that the government would not admit him to a
hospital because the agency considered a biopsy "an elective
outpatient procedure."
How
did Hui reach the astonishing conclusion that a biopsy, in the case
of a suspect lesion that might be cancerous, is an elective
procedure?
The
presiding judge, U.S. District Judge Dean Pregerson, found evidence
that suggests that the reason behind the absurd rationale for
withholding the test is monetary: Hui characterized the surgery as
elective simply so that the federal government would not to have to
provide or pay for it.
The
judge, in issuing a ruling that the plaintiffs can pursue their
lawsuit against the government, lambasted the conduct of officials as
being “miles beyond negligence” and as constituting “cruel and
unusual punishment.”
The
tragic case of Francisco Castaneda is an extreme example, yet a
similar rationale as that apparently used by Dr. Hui is deployed in
this country every day to inflict myriad smaller but no less real
cruelties and crimes against the life and dignity of immigrants, poor
people, and others caught in the webs of the medical, immigration,
and prison systems.
