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Immigrants held in Immigration and Customs Enforcement jails around the US received medical care so bad it resulted in two preventable surgeries, including an 8-year-old boy who had to have part of his forehead removed, and contributed to four deaths, according to an internal complaint from an agency whistleblower. The allegations appear in an explosive Department of Homeland Security memo, obtained by BuzzFeed News, containing reports of detainees being given incorrect medication, suffering from delays in treating withdrawal symptoms, and one who was allowed to become so mentally unstable he lacerated his own penis and required reparative surgery. (Aleaziz, 12/12)

Details: The memo says the agency's inspector general received its first complaint in April 2018, which claims that detainees were subjected to "forcible medication injections as a means of behavior control" and "misdiagnosis of medical and mental health conditions," among other accusations. (Rummler, 12/13)

At the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia, a man who was bleeding through his skin continued to receive aspirin even though he had extremely thin blood. The man was eventually taken to a hospital in critical condition and not expected to survive, according to a report summarizing the complaint that was delivered to ICE leadership in March. In Arizona, a detainee at the Eloy Federal Contract Facility had “worsening psychosis-related symptoms, but the psychiatrist failed to treat him,” the report says. (12/13)

In December 2017, the boy’s mother reportedly told officials at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, that her son’s earache had worsened for weeks. Medical personnel diagnosed him with swimmer’s ear and gave him ear drops, but two weeks later the boy had seizures and doctors at a local hospital diagnosed him with Pott’s puffy tumor, a rare infection in the skull. Doctors had to remove part of the boy’s forehead to treat the infection, and the whistleblower alleged that “inadequate medical care provided by [the detention center] was a contributory factor resulting in harm.” (Pitofsky, 12/12)

Federal immigration officials were asked to retain footage of a transgender detainee 10 days after her death — yet roughly three months later they said it no longer existed, according to a new internal email reviewed by BuzzFeed News. The video of 33-year-old Roxsana Hernández Rodriguez, who died in US custody on May 25, 2018, was requested by an investigative division of ICE as part of a review into her death. In the June 4, 2018, email, an analyst with ICE's Office of Professional Responsibility requested a number of records related to Hernández's death, including footage of her time at the Cibola County Correctional Center (CCCC) in Milan, New Mexico, on May 16–17. (Flores, 12/12)