Ben Wagner

Ben Wagner
Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture (PSOT)
New York, USA

On Monday, July 30, I accompanied Congressman Donald M. Payne, Jr., and staff from Human Rights First on a visit to Hudson County Correctional Facility (HCCF), one of the principal facilities Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) uses to detain non-citizens in New Jersey. The purpose of the visit was to find out what, if any, changes have occurred in the six months since Human Rights First issued its report, Ailing Justice, which documents the inadequate conditions at HCCF.

Even after reading and writing about the plight of civil detainees for the past three years, I was not prepared for my encounter with the people I had been studying from afar. The impact of meeting a few of the detainees face-to-face profoundly affected me and made all too real the suffering and abuses I had only read about.

Only a few of the immigrant detainees spoke English, and those who had the chance to speak with us all sought our help. Some had dealt with lawyers who’d lost their papers. Others had been forcibly separated from their children and were looking for any reassurance that their kids were okay.

Dressed in the orange jumpsuits of prisoners, the detainees were treated worse than criminals. On the last visit, we observed one woman using a bra as a sling for a clavicle fracture. We were also made aware that a woman who had recently miscarried in jail and who had hemorrhaged badly was given antibiotics and sanitary napkins for weeks instead of being taken to an appropriate medical facility. Had I stayed longer or understood more Spanish, I am certain I would have learned of many more cases of abject abuse and mistreatment.

HCCF would be 66% empty and unused, creating a burden on the county and likely a loss of jobs for many unionized corrections officers, if it were not for the roughly 800 civil detainees filling the beds. The economic motivation to fill jails, especially with people who have few, if any, enforceable rights and are not members of the community, belies any articulated desire to address the problem of civil detention.

HCCF’s civil detainees include asylum seekers fleeing persecution, parents separated from their children, and those deemed to have entered the US illegally–almost all from our southern border. They end up in New Jersey only because that’s where there are empty beds. Held under civil, not criminal, authority, the detainees endure a range of hardships, from dirty drinking water to harassment to solitary confinement. Compounded by inadequate medical and mental health care, these conditions can cause severe suffering, long-term physical and emotional damage, and avoidable deaths.

In addition, the head of the Hudson County Corrections Officers Union complained publicly that the staff at HCCF is not competent to serve the prison population, as many transferred from a recently closed juvenile detention facility. Guards at a JV prison do not receive the same training as corrections officers at an adult facility.

As the tour ended, we had a chance to speak with the warden, Congressman Payne, and the staff about what could be done to improve detention conditions. Suggestions included more humane treatment of the detainees, allowing them to wear their own clothes, allowing visits with family members, and providing information and communication with their children. While it was generally acknowledged that there is room for improvement and that the situation is difficult all around, such aphorisms–instead of assuaging my anger at the situation–only heightened my awareness of how intractable a problem this is and how the detainees are treated as less than human because they are seen not as people but as a problem.

If we cannot see others as fellow human beings, how can we expect to treat them as such?

Ben Wagner
Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture (PSOT)
New York, USA

On Tuesday, June 26, I along with several colleagues from PSOT honored the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture at an event organized by Argentina, Mongolia, Denmark, the Delegation of the European Union, and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights at the United Nations. Program Director Dr. Allen Keller and Chief Psychiatrist Dr. Asher Aladjem spoke on an expert-led panel about strategies for the prevention of torture and the rehabilitation of torture victims, moderated by Amnesty International’s Julia Hall, an expert on counter-terrorism, criminal justice, and human rights.

Since 1997, when the UN General Assembly first proclaimed the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, this day has marked an important opportunity to call on all stakeholders to unite in support of the hundreds of thousands of people around the world who have been or are current victims of torture. However, despite the prohibition of torture being described in absolute terms and widely recognized as a human rights violation, we continue to witness it each and every day across the world. We see it walk through our program doors every day.

As we continue to witness the human devastation of such actions nearly 70 years since the UDHR, is there hope for the future? Will the view of UN Resolution 52/149 ever be met?

On this particular Tuesday, June 26, 2018, one survivor was able to tell us, “Yes there is hope.”

Just six years ago, one survivor of torture fleeing persecution from the Democratic Republic of Congo arrived in the United States with no interest in living. Anyone he met was a threat and not to be trusted. His fears led him to believe everyone was a spy with connections to his torturers. Even thousands of miles away, nowhere was safe. Six years ago, there was no peace to be found from sleep. Horrible memories played repeatedly in his mind to the point where he thought his only option was to end it all.

It was the support from this community that changed his life: this survivor found the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture. After just six years of medical care, mental health care, group therapy, and legal services, he is now a permanent resident of the United States and is pursuing a college degree in nursing so he can help others as well. And all with optimism, trust, and a positive outlook on life and the future.

You could feel the atmosphere in the room change as this survivor of torture shared his truth. As he spoke, an electrifying wave of empathy and relief lifted fellow members of the audience, inspiring them to work towards a future defined by hope. This one man, formerly of the Democratic Republic of Congo, testified that he not only survived but thrived, thanks to human rights supporters and organizations like PSOT. The obligation, now, is to learn from the success of this survivor and to reach the countless others still trapped by their fears and yearning to be truly free.

Ben Wagner
Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture (PSOT)
New York, USA

Originally written on June 4, 2018.

Last week marked the commencement of my summer project interning at PSOT, the same week that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced the death of Roxana Hernandez, the 6^th detainee to die in ICE custody in the fiscal year 2018. Roxana, a transgender woman fleeing from Honduras, was one of about 25 transgender women participating in the Central American migrant caravan that arrived at the U.S. border at the end of April. The transgender migrants were forced to flee due to the “violence, hate, stigma and vulnerability” they faced in their home countries. According to Pueblo Sin Fronteras, the immigration rights group and organizer of the caravan, Roxana surrendered at San Ysidro port of entry between San Diego and Tijuana, requesting asylum.

Soon after requesting asylum, Roxana was initially held in a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) processing facility, often referred to as hieleras (Spanish for “iceboxes”), notorious for their freezing temperatures and poor conditions. Presenting with clear signs of medical distress, including being HIV positive and having pneumonia, Roxana was detained for 5 days in a cell where she was freezing cold, lacked adequate food and medical care, and where the lights are kept on 24 hours a day.

A 2015 report from the American Immigration Council describes the “icebox” holding cells as “wholly inadequate for any overnight detention.” Official CBP policy states that detention in these holding cells should last no longer than 12 hours, according to a CBP memo cited in a lawsuit that was filed July 2015 in a federal district court in Tucson, AZ, brought by the American Immigration Council, the National Immigration Law Center, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona. The report also describes the holding facilities as “routinely lacking in adequate food, water, and medical care,” often housing up to 45 people in a single cell designed to only hold 25.

A week later, Roxana was transferred to the transgender unit in the Cibola County Correctional Center in Milan, NM, a privately run federal prison for men that contracts with ICE. In detention, transgender women are notoriously targeted and harassed by fellow guards and inmates, where they experience violence and abuse and are unable to access medical care.

By the next day, Roxana was taken to a local hospital with symptoms of pneumonia, dehydration, and “complications associated with HIV,” according to ICE. Hours later, she was transferred to a hospital in Albuquerque, where “she remained in the intensive care unit until her passing.”

ICE’s treatment of Roxana, an extremely vulnerable and traumatized transgender woman seeking asylum from persecution, highlights the egregious human rights violations and medical neglect that plague the U.S. immigration detention system. In light of this tragedy, I along with PSOT reaffirm my commitment to serving people under immigration detention in the U.S., particularly members of the LGBTQ community who are seeking asylum from persecution and torture and who want safety and acceptance, which everyone deserves.

Ben Wagner
Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture (PSOT)
New York, USA

My name is Ben Wagner, and I’m a third-year BA-MPH dual-degree candidate at Gallatin and the College of Global Public Health, studying global health and human rights on the pre-med track. My focus this summer is the intersectionality of health and human rights as it relates to immigrants detained in the US civil detention system. 

Over the past two years, working as an administrative assistant with the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture (PSOT) in New York City, I have been introduced to both victims of human rights abuse and those who care for them. PSOT has made it evident that healthcare professionals can have a critical role in promoting and protecting human rights.

Recently arrived refugees are often unaware of PSOT. They typically enter through the emergency room, only to be referred to PSOT during intake. Dr. Allen S. Keller, director of PSOT and the NYU School of Medicine Center for Health and Human Rights, wrote in a recent article about a client who was tortured and beaten for speaking out against his government and who then fled to New York. After being granted asylum due to a medical affidavit submitted by PSOT, the client said, “You have given me back my life.” Saving lives is every doctor’s goal, yet few physicians work to eradicate torture and other human rights abuses.

Prevention, a core function of modern medicine, routinely includes education, documentation, identification, and treatment.  Applied to human rights issues, education in the form of advocacy advances legislative action to outlaw torture. Documenting human rights abuses exposes the systems and agencies that allow abuse to occur.  Identifying and treating victims of human rights abuse within a medical framework transforms politics into healthcare, allowing for radical reassessment of best practices. 

More than 400,000 people from around the world are locked up as prisoners, often without any pending criminal charges, in the US civil detention system. Physical and sexual assault, which occurs both by detainees and the guards protecting them, is exacerbated by overcrowding and is significantly under-reported.  Often fleeing from traumatic abuse in their own countries, detainees are re-traumatized by the civil detention system. 

Not fundamentally different from PSOT’s clients, immigrant civil detainees deserve the same medical attention.  Documenting human rights abuse within the civil detention population provides an evidence-based foundation to forcefully advocate for better treatment of detainees.  And if even a single detainee can say, “I have gotten my life back,” all of medicine and human rights will have advanced.