…due to a lack of treatment. A recent New York Times article details how an ICE detainee was denied medical treatment - or even a wheelchair — for months, despite terminal cancer and a broken spine.

But not to worry: according to Wyatt Detention Center’s direct of nursing,

“We treat each and every detainee in our custody with the same high level of quality, professional care possible.”

When I worked for the US Government,  I remember meeting a senior official who told me that he’d been to a training where he was taught to answer questions in such a way as to deny all agency responsibility for problems, and to make sure that he’d never be “quoted out of context.”For example, you don’t talk about the Social Security beneficiary who starved to death because she didn’t get her check and say that mistakes are made; you said something like “we at the Social Security Administration do our best to ensure that every beneficiary is treated with dignity and respect…”

It wouldn’t do to admit that, say, cancerous prisoners with broken spines were being denied treatment. But if other prisoners are being treated with  “the same high level of quality, professional care” as Mr. Ng, ICE and Wyatt Detention Facility have a lot of explaining to do.