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Mike Mitka

JAMA. 2008;300(2):160.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

The federal government is providing poor medical care for immigration detainees, critics argued at a June 4 hearing before a House Judiciary subcommittee.

During the hearing, Julie L. Myers, assistant secretary of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) with the Department of Homeland Security, said ICE spent almost $100 million on detainee health care over the last fiscal year and noted that while the detainee population has increased by more than 30% since 2004, the number of deaths in detention declined from 29 to 7 in 2007. But Homer D. Venters, MD, an attending physician at the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture, in New York City, said that after adjusting for average length of detention, the data show that the mortality rate increased 29% between 2006 and 2007, from 27 to 34 per 100 000 detention-years.

Rep Zoe Lofgren (D, Calif), chair of the subcommittee, introduced legislation (HR . . . [Full Text of this Article]