‘Gross, Deliberate Indifference’ by Feds Leads to Penile Cancer, Amputation for Salvadoran Immigrant Detainee
In a wrenching example of medical neglect among immigration detainees in the U.S., a 35-year-old Salvadoran man now faces the possibility that the penile cancer authorities refused to treat for months may be his death knell.
Francisco Castaneda, a former immigration detainee, received such grossly inadequate medical care for penile lesions while in custody that he now has potentially fatal cancer. To shirk financial responsibility for Mr. Castaneda’s treatment, the federal government released him from custody shortly after approving the biopsy that had been recommended over nearly a year by at least three physicians who had examined Mr. Castaneda during his detention.
Public Justice now represents Mr. Castaneda and plans to file a lawsuit charging federal officials with medical negligence and other tort violations under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), as well as constitutional violations. As a prerequisite to the lawsuit, Public Justice filed an FTCA administrative claim with the appropriate federal agencies in early April.
“This case is the quintessential example of what the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment was intended to prevent,” said lead counsel Conal Doyle of Willoughby Doyle, LLP, which has offices in California, Florida, New York, and Ohio. “Federal officials will never be able to adequately explain their refusal to follow the recommendations and orders of the doctors to whom they sent Mr. Castaneda for evaluation.”
Mr. Castaneda was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from March 2006 through February of this year. He spent most of his detention at the San Diego Correctional Facility (SDCF), operated by Corrections Corporation of America, the nation’s largest private prison operator. Immediately upon arriving at SDCF, Mr. Castaneda complained to correctional staff about a bleeding lesion on, and an unusual discharge from, his penis. U.S. Public Health Service medical personnel, senior ICE officers, and administrators within the Division of Immigration Health Services (DIHS) knew that the lesion urgently required a biopsy to determine whether it was cancerous and that surgical correction would be required to relieve Mr. Castaneda’s severe pain.
Not only did Mr. Castaneda repeatedly file urgent requests for medical care, but he resorted to showing guards and medical officials his bloody underwear and bed sheets. They gave him clean sheets and clothing.But he never got the medical care he needed.
Only after the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project (ACLU) secured a doctor’s
appointment for Mr. Castaneda did he learn what 11 months of indifference at the detention centers meant: there was a 90% chance that he had penile cancer.