Colorado Public Radio reports that a public-health investigation into tuberculosis at the GEO-operated ICE detention center in Aurora had reached a standstill Monday, the same day GEO faced a deadline to comply with a Colorado public health order. As of 4 p.m., state officials said they still had not heard from GEO or ICE about their response.
The underlying health question is serious. A tuberculosis case was confirmed in June, and state and local health officials have been trying to conduct the kind of investigation normally used to determine exposure, contacts and follow-up. CPR reports that GEO and ICE have not provided state and local authorities with medical information about confirmed or suspected active TB cases, a complete contact list, or information about cross-border notification and coordination.
And now we arrive at the part government and corporate bureaucracies have perfected into an Olympic sport: everybody has authority until somebody asks who is responsible. ICE told CPR to ask GEO because GEO owns the facility. GEO had not responded to CPR by publication time. Meanwhile, the clock on Colorado’s order kept ticking. Nothing inspires confidence in public health quite like institutional hot potato.
The Bullet Point Brief
- Colorado wanted an actual investigation. The state health department issued GEO Group a public health order after repeated efforts to get cooperation with local health officials. The deadline was the end of Monday, August 17. Apparently “please deal with the tuberculosis investigation” needed to graduate from request to legal order before anyone could locate the urgency button.
- ICE found the corporate suggestion box. When CPR asked ICE about the situation Monday, the agency referred questions back to GEO, saying GEO owns the facility. That is technically an answer in the same way “ask the other guy” is technically customer service.
- GEO was not exactly filling the information vacuum. CPR reported that GEO had not responded to its request for comment. Sen. John Hickenlooper also said ICE officials and GEO employees told him they could not provide information based on advice of counsel. Lawyers may have their reasons. Tuberculosis, regrettably, does not consult counsel before becoming inconvenient.
- The unanswered questions are not trivia. CPR reports that officials still lacked clarity about potential exposures, follow-up testing, people released into the community and other information ordinarily involved in a TB investigation. Eight detainees had also been quarantined for an unidentified medical condition, although GEO and ICE staff said there were no positive TB cases in the facility at that time. What those eight detainees had remained unclear.
- The real scandal here is the accountability fog. CPR’s reporting does not establish why cooperation stalled, and pretending otherwise would be cheap. What it does establish is that a state investigation remained unresolved as the deadline approached, ICE was pointing questions toward GEO, and Colorado officials said they were still waiting for a response. That is plenty embarrassing without inventing anything.
My Bottom Line
Immigration enforcement is a legitimate function of government. Detaining people who are subject to immigration proceedings does not offend me. What does offend me is handing institutions enormous power over people and then watching those same institutions suddenly develop a severe case of institutional amnesia when somebody asks a basic question like, “Who is responsible for the tuberculosis investigation?”
ICE and GEO do not get to play a bureaucratic shell game here. Not because CPR has proven which one caused the delay. It has not. They are accountable because they are the institutions exercising control over this facility and the people inside it. When a communicable-disease investigation involving more than a thousand detainees is sitting unresolved, “talk to the other office” is not leadership. It is administrative bullshit wearing a lanyard.
Aurora residents should not need a decoder ring to figure out whether public-health officials can investigate a potential communicable disease. Detainees should not have to wonder whether somebody with actual authority is tracking exposure and follow-up. Employees should not have to guess, either. If the state’s deadline passes without compliance, Coloradans deserve a plain explanation of what happens next, who is responsible for producing the information, and who will be held accountable if they do not.
Government loves power. Corporations under government contract love the check. Fine. Then both can enjoy the less glamorous half of the arrangement: responsibility. You do not get the badge, the contract, the locked doors and the lawyers, then suddenly become helpless when somebody asks for straight answers about tuberculosis.
Source: Colorado Public Radio
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