sometimes

i think we're nothing more than animals.

these are two cases we know about. how many cases DON'T we know about?
question: shouldn't ALL people be treated with respect? with dignity? with COMPASSION?

Electronic trail incriminates government in detainee's cancer death
Nick Langewis
Damning electronic evidence has been brought to light that incriminates the federal government in the neglect of a detainee in the months preceding his cancer death.
Having fled his native El Salvador with his family at age 10, Francisco Castaneda, 36, was an illegal immigrant, though he had lived in Los Angeles for close to 25 years, and fathered his daughter Vanessa, before a drug possession conviction found him incarcerated and facing deportation.
In March of 2006, while Castaneda was in custody, his assigned doctor wanted him immediately admitted to a hospital and a biopsy done on a painful lesion on his penis, suspicious that it was cancerous. Division of Immigration Health Services refused the request, seeking more "cost-effective" treatment options. An emergency circumcision and biopsy of the lesion, later recommended by a urologist, were refused as "elective" treatment, according to Castaneda's testimony to Congress on October 4, 2007. The cancer would go untreated throughout 2006, despite repeated requests for help, and it had visibly spread by the end of the year...........

In Custody, In Pain
Beset by Medical Problems as She Fights Deportation, A U.S. Resident Struggles to Get the Treatment She Needs
by Amy Goldstein and Dana Priest Washington Post Staff Writers

FLORENCE, Ariz. -- Underneath her baggy jail-issue pants, Yong Sun Harvill feels the soft lump just below her left knee. Sometimes it tingles. Sometimes it is numb. Like her cancer felt when it arrived behind the knee a few years ago.
She noticed the lump under the thin, blue cotton in August, five months after federal immigration officers, to her amazement, took her into custody to try to deport her for buying stolen jewelry more than a decade ago. The lump grows slowly. It is now three inches across. And though she keeps asking, no one has done a test to see whether her sarcoma has come back.
Her leg is painful and swollen from hip to foot, damaged by past surgeries and radiation treatments. Some nights, liquid seeps through cracks in her distended skin. Her left ankle is three times as big as her right. For years, she relied on a leg pump to boost her circulation and keep the swelling in check. But as an immigration detainee in this desert prison town, Harvill, 52, has been unable to persuade anyone to get her a pump, or to let her family back in Florida send hers from home.........