Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has been so close to letting medical services for detained people lapse that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) watchdog issued an alert urging the agency leaders to act as soon as possible, saying that “[a]t a time when CBP is challenged with a COVID-19 pandemic that poses a serious public health and safety risk to both migrants in custody and CBP staff, it is critical that medical services continue uninterrupted.”
While CBP has since said it plans to award a two-year contract near the end of the month (but hasn’t yet done so), the agency apparently had an issue with the inspector general’s alert, “which is reserved for urgent issues that require the immediate attention of agency leadership,” CNN reports. “According to CBP, our concern is misplaced and this alert will cause undue alarm or panic,” the inspector general said in response. “We strongly disagree.”
The inspector general’s report details numerous instances where CBP has already failed to meet important deadlines—including dates set by the agency itself—to ensure the continuation of medical services in its facilities, where both children and adults have been held for days and weeks at a time.
“In July 2020, during our review, contracting officers repeatedly assured us they would complete a solicitation within 24 hours, but CBP still had not completed it when we issued the draft alert on August 18, 2020,” the report said. “In response to our draft alert, CBP provided a new set of planned milestones for its contract solicitation and award, indicating CBP would not complete drafting its solicitation until September 1, 2020, more than 2 months later than its original milestone. As of September 3, 2020, CBP still had not issued its solicitation.”
The inspector general said that the current contract is set to expire on Sept. 29. “In response to the alert, CBP told the inspector general it plans to award a new two-year medical services contract on or about September 24,” CNN said. On or about. So just a few days before it expires, and it won’t even commit to a specific date. Or maybe it’ll just give itself another extension. It’s just human lives, after all. No rush.
Recall that CBP isn’t providing medical services out of the goodness of its heart, but because Congress funded it after the unprecedented deaths of migrant children in the agency’s custody. Fiona Danaher, a pediatrician and Harvard Medical School professor who was asked by legislators this past summer to testify about two of those deaths, said she believed both 7-year-old Jakelin Ameí Rosmery Caal Maquin and 8-year-old Felipe Gómez Alonzo could have been saved if they’d received the urgent and adequate medical attention they desperately needed.
But another government watchdog found that CBP illegally squandered some of that funding, saying this past summer that the agency unlawfully spent some of those funds on a canine program, dirt bikes, and computer network upgrades, as well as made a deliberate, inhumane decision to ignore a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendation to give detained people flu vaccinations following an in-custody flu death.
Meanwhile, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office also found that CBP used some of that funding to support a vaccine program for its own employees.
“As of September 3, 2020, CBP had not issued a solicitation for a new contract,” the DHS inspector general summarized in its new report. “This leaves fewer than 30 days for the necessary funding and contracting reviews and approvals before CBP can make the award. A lapse in this contract could jeopardize the health and safety of migrants in CBP custody, as well as that of U.S. Border Patrol agents, CBP officers, and staff, especially during the current pandemic.”
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