Being an undocumented immigrant in the United States is not easy. They are constantly demeaned and targeted by the racist, right-wing nut jobs that are afraid that the face of the nation is changing to something a little less white. They fear the police when they are driving, because they are no longer able to obtain a driver’s license courtesy of the Bush Administration’s Real ID Act. They worry that there may be a workplace raid at their job and they will be deported when they are simply trying to support their family. They are constantly talked about on Fox News as if they are the scum of the earth and everything wrong with a country that they love. It sucks being an undocumented immigrant in America, and now they have a new enemy … hospitals.





In May 2008, two men, Jacinto Cruz and Jose Rodriguez-Saldana, were returning home from a fishing trip when a semitrailer truck struck the vehicle they were riding in. Both men were ejected from the vehicle, sustained serious head injuries, and fell in to a coma. Eleven days after they suffered the injuries they were on their way to Veracruz, Mexico to a hospital that agreed to take and treat them. The hospital that they were at, Iowa Methodist Medical Center in Des Moines, deported them after it became unclear whether or not their insurance from a pork producing factory would cover the long-term rehabilitation care they needed. The insurance company had already paid $100,000 in medical bills, so the hospital decided to stem their costs using a little known process called ‘Medical Repatriation.’

Here’s the video:

Medical Repatriation is a program that gives the hospital the option to return the immigrant to their country of origin so that the hospital does not get ‘stuck’ paying for a patient that does not have the means to pay their medical bills. How sweet of them, what a wonderful way to help their patients (insert lots of sarcasm).

The Center for Social Justice and New York Lawyers for the Public Interest have documented at least 600 immigrants who were involuntarily removed in the past five years for medical reasons. The figure is based on data from hospitals, humanitarian organizations, news reports and immigrant advocates who cited specific cases. But the actual number is believed to be significantly higher because many more cases almost certainly go unreported.

So there is no government oversight in this situation? Immigration officials say that they have no jurisdiction in situations like this that it is solely up to the hospitals.

Gail Montenegro, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the agency “plays no role in a health care provider’s private transfer of a patient to his or her country of origin.” Such transfers “are not the result of federal authority or action,” she said in an email, nor are they considered “removals, deportations or voluntary departures” as defined by the Immigration and Nationality Act.

So basically hospitals have the right to hire a private company ( by the way there are companies that specialize in just this very type of situation…hell yeah ‘Murica making money off of the defenseless) and deport a comatose patient without any federal involvement at all. If an immigrant gets into an accident and falls into a coma they just lose all of their rights to a trial before an immigration judge? Yep, that seems to be the case. The Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause states that,” be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” Apparently this only applies to people who are not sick and comatose.