"It's Too Late for Me": The Story of One Immigrant Who Didn't Survive Detention.

• Author: Maury, Laurel
• Position: Essay

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Francisco Castañeda came to the United States from El Salvador when he was ten. It was 1983. His father had just died of a heart attack, and his country was in the midst of a civil war. His mother packed up their belongings, crossed the border illegally with her four young children, and settled in an apartment complex in Southern California. The family never went back.

Castañeda, known by his middle name, Alex, grew up in L.A. He then worked in construction and had a daughter, Vanessa. He also got involved in drugs. In late 2005 and early 2006, he spent four months in prison for possession of methamphetamines. From there, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) took him into custody in its San Diego facility.

Castañeda had a painful lesion on his penis and he immediately asked to see a doctor about it. Within a few days, a doctor examined him and said he needed to see a specialist.

"But instead of sending me directly to a specialist, I was forced to wait, and wait, and wait," Castañeda testified at a Congressional hearing last October 4. "All the while, my pain got worse. It started to bleed even more and smell really bad."

More than a month passed, and Castañeda saw an oncologist, who was worried that he had cancer and told him he needed a biopsy.

"I tried to get medical help every day," he testified. "Sometimes, I would show the guards my underwear with blood in it to get them to take me to medical, but then they would say they couldn't do anything for me. All they gave me was Motrin and other pain pills. At one point, the doctor gave me special permission to have more clean underwear and bedsheets because I was getting blood on everything. A guard from my unit once told me he would pray for me because he could see how much I was suffering."

When he became fearful and upset, they gave him sleeping pills and considered referring him to a psychologist. The Division of Immigration Health Services (DIHS), a part of ICE, deemed this treatment "necessary, appropriate, and in accordance with our policies" and declared a biopsy "not urgent."

Through the summer and fall of 2006, Castañeda petitioned DIHS to give him a biopsy. Again and again, it refused. In a classic example of doublespeak, DIHS wrote that he "DOES NOT have cancer at this time due to not having a biopsy performed." When describing the biopsy that two outside doctors had ordered, DIHS employees inserted the word "elective" into their reports, which neither...