Health and Safety of Immigrant Detainees

Press and News: Member Updates

Friday, June 28, 2019 (2 Comments)
Posted by: Roy Muyinza

Share |

Texas Nurses Association and its members are concerned about the health and safety conditions of facilities housing immigrant detainees on the border. Children and adults held by U.S. Customs and Border Protection have been denied hygiene products, access to health care, and appropriate sleeping arrangements.

Attorneys indicated that detainees have not been given adequate food and water and are forced to crowd together in unsanitary conditions. Unable to bathe or wash their clothes, many detainees have fallen sick and disease has spread through detention centers.

These conditions are dangerous, unethical, and antithetical to human rights. This treatment has been condemned by the American Nurses Association and the U.S. Department of Health of Human Services.

Read ANA’s statement to the acting secretary of Homeland Security.

Several nurses have inquired about volunteer opportunities to assist the migrants at our nation’s southern border. While organizing such volunteer efforts is beyond TNA’s capacity, there are a number of voluntary, community, faith-based or international organizations dedicated to this work. Learn more:

Comments...

Christa P. Potter RN says...
Posted Sunday, July 21, 2019

Any Registered Nurse that disagrees with the above statement is not following the ANA’s Provision of the Code of Ethics for Nurses, specifically Provisions 1–9 (all of them). Also, please consider re-reading the ANA’s code of ethics (2015), especially Provisions 1, 2, 3, 8, and 9. Therefore, as an RN that is in disagreement with the TNA’s above press release and the ANA’s letter to the acting Secretary of HHS, you should reconsider if you are able uphold your duty outlined in Provision 9 that you “...must articulate nursing values, maintain the integrity of the profession of nursing, and integrate principles of social justice into nursing and health policy,” (American Nurses Association, 2015, p. 7). References The American Nurses Association. (2015). Code of ethics for nurses with interpretive statements. Silver Spring, MD: Author. Retrieved from https://www.nursingworld.org/practice-policy/nursing-excellence/ethics/code-of-ethics-for-nurses/coe-view-only/

Kerry Evans says...
Posted Sunday, July 21, 2019

Although my compassion for human life and kindness or no less than others within our nursing community, the expression of such thoughts as our countries inability to sustain and treat illegal immigrants "with humanitarian compassion" are not the reflection of All ANA or TNA members. Within your information, there are no linked resources showing that we as ANA members have reviewed and or observed "unhumanitarian" issues by our country, much less show compassion toward those that suffer within our own country. We should first defend our own citizens of impoverished and poor conditions from those that would harm them by those that enter illegally bringing harm to our own citizens many which took the right path to freedom by entering legally. The information you "demanded" on our behalf, for American to serve those that would break our laws should focus on helping our own law-abiding citizens underserviced within our own nation by demanding Congress to help fix open border laws.