This report utilizes a human rights framework to critique the widespread but barely publicized practice of forced or coerced medical repatriations of immigrant patients.
This report, a collaborative project of Seton Hall University School of Law’s Center for Social Justice (CSJ) and the Health Justice Program at New York Lawyers for the Public Interest (NYLPI), utilizes a human rights framework to critique the widespread but barely publicized practice of forced or coerced medical repatriations of immigrant patients. Through this practice, private and public hospitals in the United States are engaged in unlawful, and frequently extrajudicial, deportations of ill or injured immigrant patients to medical facilities abroad, completely circumventing the federal government’s exclusive authority to deport individuals. While most medical repatriations occur in the shadows, there is enough information to establish that the U.S. is in systematic violation of its human rights obligations under a variety of treaties that the U.S. has signed and/or ratified. Overall, hospitals, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), journalists, and advocates have been able to document more than 800 cases of attempted or successful medical repatriations across the United States in the past six years.
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