Immigrant deaths in US jails under scanner

The Obama administration has vowed to overhaul immigration detention,a network of privately run jails,federal centers and county cells where the government holds non-citizens while it tries to deport them. Meanwhile,the documents show how officials some still in key positions used their role as overseers to cover up evidence of mistreatment.

As one man lay dying of head injuries suffered in a New Jersey immigration jail in 2007,for example,a spokesman for the federal agency told The New York Times that he could learn nothing about the case from authorities. In fact,records show,the spokesman had alerted those officials to the reporters inquiry,and they conferred at length about sending the man back to Africa to avoid embarrassing publicity. In another case that year,investigators from the agencys Office of Professional Responsibility said that unbearable,untreated pain had been a significant factor in the suicide of a 22-year-old detainee at the Bergen County Jail in New Jersey. The investigation found that jail medical personnel had falsified a medication log to show that the detainee,a Salvadoran named Nery Romero,had been given Motrin. The fake entry was easy to detect: When the drug was supposedly administered,Romero was already dead.