Marie DeLuca is a co-founder of Doctors for Camp Closure and an emergency medicine research fellow in New York. She attended medical school at the Warren Alpert School of Medicine in Providence, Rhode Island, and completed her emergency medical residency training in Detroit, Michigan. Katherine McKenzie, a member of Doctors for Camp Closure, is on the faculty of Yale School of Medicine and is the director of the Yale Center for Asylum Medicine. The views expressed in this commentary belong to the authors. View more opinion at CNN.

(CNN) As doctors, we know that administering flu shots is easy. They're inexpensive, quick and low-risk. When people are vaccinated against the flu, they're protected from what can be a miserable and sometimes deadly disease. It's preventative care at its best and doctors love it for that reason: we save lives and thwart illnesses with evidence-based medicine that is well-tolerated and effective.

Marie DeLuca

Katherine McKenzie

Immigration officials in the US, however, are denying people in their custody access to this basic care. The CDC recommended flu vaccinations for migrants, but the US Customs and Border Protection (CPB) rejected the idea, choosing instead to turn a blind eye to the potential public health crisis brewing in their facilities. CBP has argued that most migrants spend less than 72 hours in Border Patrol facilities, and told the Washington Post that it would be "logistically very challenging."

Immigrants have suffered unnecessary illness and death while in US custody. Among them are at least t hree children who died of flu-related complications during the 2018-2019 flu season. Carlos Hernandez Vasquez , a 16-year-old from Guatemala, was found dead in a Border Patrol holding cell in May, just six days after he arrived in the US. The day before his death, a nurse practitioner at a federal processing center in McAllen, Texas, diagnosed him with the flu and found he had a 103-degree fever. She recommended he be monitored and sent to the emergency room if his condition worsened, but he was quarantined in a cell instead.

As physicians, we can't stand by any longer. And so we started the nonpartisan organization Doctors for Camp Closure . While we oppose the inhumane detention of migrants and refugees attempting to enter the US, we want to ensure that children and families are provided the necessary medical care. Vaccinating people is the least CBP could do -- and it helps to protect the people in their custody, as well as their own staff. We are committed to making sure that happens. As doctors, we grappled with what some might perceive as a political cause, but after seeing preventable deaths we knew we couldn't stay silent. Amid humanitarian and medical challenges, we follow the tenet of the American Medical Association that " humanity is our patient ."

In November, as we prepared to vaccinate our own patients, we wrote a letter to the Departments of Homeland Security (DHS) and Health and Human Services (HHS) offering to pilot a free flu vaccination clinic, run by licensed US physicians, to people in immigrant detention centers. Our offer included the purchase and administration of vaccines as well as all of the necessary consent forms and other paperwork, effectively removing any financial or logistical burdens CBP might point to as reasons for denying people this standard of preventative care. They chose not to respond to our written request.

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