September 19, 2019

Demonizing Those Who Provide Healthcare to Illegals

Leftists are “outing” anyone who contracts with ICE to take care of detained migrants.

“The identities of the individual Customs and Border Protection agents who are physically separating children from their families and staffing the detention centers are not undiscoverable. Immigration lawyers have agent names; journalists reporting at the border have names, photos and even videos. These agents’ actions should be publicized, particularly in their home communities.” —New York Times columnist Kate Cronin-Furman, June 29, 2019

Nothing demonstrates American leftists’ fascist tendencies better than their effort to strike fear into those who refuse to march in lockstep with “progressive” dogma. And while President Donald Trump is their main target, nothing animates the Left’s hatred more than his effort to rein in illegal immigration. Thus government workers who belong to ICE have also been demonized.

Now it’s the Border Patrol’s turn, and the Times — an entity no reasonable person can any longer refer to as a “newspaper” — wants to extend that demonization to those who protect the border. The paper “reports” that the Border Patrol’s new focus is “to block and detain hundreds of thousands of migrant families fleeing violence and extreme poverty — herding people into tents and cages, seizing children and sending their parents to jail, trying to spot those too sick to survive in the densely packed processing facilities along the border.”

For those who prefer reality to rank propaganda, “herding” people into tents and cages is exactly what the Obama administration did, even as the same leftist propagandists mistakenly used pictures from 2014 to blame the Trump administration.

That inconvenient truth hasn’t dimmed the ardor of Democrats like the inimitable Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who never misses an opportunity to “enlighten” her fellow Americans. “The United States is running concentration camps on the southern border,” she insisted last June. “And that is exactly what they are. They are concentration camps.”

Unsurprisingly, the Democrat/Media Complex advanced this meme. Even Wikipedia joined the progressive campaign, adding “Migrants at the Mexico–United States border” to its “List of concentration and internment camps” throughout the world.

All of this effort is designed to advance a radical leftist agenda whereby Americans either countenance the wholesale invasion of their nation, and simply hope illegal aliens show up for their immigration court hearing that will be years in the future — due to the backlog of more than 850,000 cases clogging those courts — or one is tantamount to a “Nazi” or Nazi sympathizer.

Yet since America still maintains a grip on reality (albeit more tenuous than ever), that’s not going to happen, any more than it happened during the Obama administration. Thus it once again behooves the NY Times to remind us what detainees really need. “Outbreaks of scabies, shingles and chickenpox were spreading among the hundreds of children and adults who were being held in cramped cells, agents said,” according to the paper.

Sounds like some detainees need medical treatment. And since they do, one would assume the American Left would welcome those who provide it with open arms.

Think again. “As part of this effort to controversialize ICE, the illegal immigrant supporters point to what they call inhumane conditions and treatment of the migrants in federal custody as the system has been overwhelmed,” reporter Sharyl Attkisson explains. “That’s where part two of the phenomenon comes into play. At the same time they complain ICE isn’t providing the illegal immigrants proper medical treatment, shelter, food and care — the activists are working to discourage companies and contractors that are doing just that. A new article on the website Medscape, which is owned by Web MD, ‘outs’ medical centers that have contracts with ICE, as if the business relationship [is] something to be considered controversial.”

Got that? If you help illegals you also get demonized. Medscape makes sure everyone knows who the “culprits” are in an article entitled “Does Your Medical Center Have a Contract With ICE? These Do.” They even provide two tables — “Table 1. Institutions With ICE/CBP Medical Care Contracts” and “Table 2. Institutions With ICE/CBP Nonmedical Care Contracts” — that list each entity’s Institution, Agency, Purpose, Contract Fee, Start Date, and End Date.

What about medical ethics and obligations? In an editorial for The Washington Post, Ranit Mishori, a professor of family medicine at the Georgetown University School of Medicine — and faculty leader of the Asylum Program and the Incarceration and Health student interest group — made sure readers understood the subliminal message that any doctor who wishes to become the lead physician at an ICE detention center in Basile, Louisiana would be required to “follow orders” she deems unethical. “Any doctor who signs up to work in an ICE detention facility and commits ‘philosophically’ to the mission there will face an ethical dilemma,” she asserts. “As physicians, we swear to put patients’ well-being above any other consideration — to ‘first, do no harm.’ The immigration policies the administration is carrying out now would make that extremely difficult.”

Only if one elevates left-wing politics over real-world medical needs. Nonetheless, Medscape sounds the alarm, warning, “Whether the medical care contracts are renewed may depend on continued protests by those who disagree with ICE and CBP policies.”

Protests that could ultimately prevent illegals who need medical attention from getting it.

Some doctors aren’t buying into the nonsense. In an article published by JAMA on Aug. 30, Johns Hopkins University physicians Paul Spiegel, Nancy Kass, and Leonard Rubenstein explain what “first do no harm” really means. “Whatever the future of US immigration policy, decent and humane treatment of children, as well as all other detainees, and preservation of the independence of physicians and other health professionals to meet patients’ medical and psychological needs are essential,” they write. “Now is not a time to change the commitments, reputation, and integrity of physicians and the medical profession.”

ICE released a statement responding to Medscape Medical News asserting the agency has “several levels of oversight in order to ensure that residents in ICE custody reside in safe, secure and humane environments,” including “a comprehensive physical exam within 14 days of arrival to identify medical, mental health and dental conditions that require monitoring or treatment,” and “timely and appropriate responses to emergent medical requests, and timely medical care appropriate to the anticipated length of detention.” In fact, the statement adds, “At no time during detention will a detainee be denied emergent care.”

That anyone would oppose such treatment for any reason is a testament to the ideological bankruptcy that surrounds the issue of illegal immigration.

Yet who’s kidding whom? Other than a handful of conservative Republicans and Trump, no one is really interested in solving the illegal immigration problem. Democrats wish to fundamentally transform the nation itself, while Chamber of Commerce-beholden RINOs are content to fundamentally transform the wage structures of those forced to compete with workers who have no business being here.

Both parties serve a globalist agenda completely antithetical to the interests of ordinary Americans. And if that agenda requires a wholly illogical and inhumane approach to medical care — as in allowing people to suffer because it’s a more effective political tool than alleviating that suffering — so be it.

“Doc doxxing” has a nice ring to it — all the sarcasm fully intended.

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